4 ms·

If both definitions of 'delegation' end up having the same purpose, does it really matter? Why should I care that Rails' 'delegate' isn't exactly how some guy i

If both definitions of 'delegation' end up having the same purpose, does it really matter? Why should I care that Rails' 'delegate' isn't exactly how some guy in 1970 would've written it? This whole "object-orientation" bent in the Ruby community lately just feels like a crusade, with people thumping on old OO books, each proclaiming theirs is the "true way". And, usually, like in this example, it doesn't even matter because their code ends up doing exactly the same thing with little real-world gains in readability or ease of understanding.

dasil003 14y ago
One of the traits that allows us to be competent programmers is a pedantry about technical terminology. Why overload the concept of message forwarding with a second term if what that term was originally coined to describe is a useful paradigm? I had never heard of this distinction, however it immediately made sense to me because I've run into this case in Ruby where using a ruby "delegate" object actually was much more verbose than I had envisioned because of all the context I had to bring over to the delegate object one way or another. In the event I decided "delegation" was not right because the implementation necessarily violated the Law of Demeter. So yeah I think pragmatically it does matter.
- true_religion 14y ago
  > One of the traits that allows us to be competent programmers I think we've failed then since we've totally overloaded and confused basic concepts such as weak/strong typing and dynamic/static typing. To make matters worse, those are cases where we as programmers invented to terminology at hand and didn't just appropriate it into a programming context.
  - petercooper 14y ago
    Since you brought up typing, you might enjoy this related confusion: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/9154388/does-untyped-also-mean-dynamically-typed-in-the-academic-cs-world http://stackoverflow.com/questions/9154388/does-untyped-also...
- btilly 14y ago
  I agree that there are cases where pedantry is necessary for programmers. That does not mean that pedantry is necessarily valuable. In this case a distinction is being drawn that would make "delegation" mean something that is worse from the point of view of good software design, which would leave the thing that is better software design without its commonly understood name. Doing this would create negative value.
  - dasil003 14y ago
    I'm not following your point. I'm saying that true delegation as defined by the article is in fact a useful tool for good software design. Maybe not as broadly useful as standard message forwarding, but something which deserves its own term.
    - btilly 14y ago
      Delegation as defined by the article makes every method call made by the delegated to class part of the programming interface that you need to be aware of when choosing to delegate. Delegation as defined by GoF makes only a specified set of callbacks be part of that interface. That says that delegation as defined by GoF does more to promote modularity than the original definition, and therefore is more often going to be preferred in good software design over that defined by the article. This is not to say that there aren't cases where what the article promotes is not convenient. Violating modularity is usually convenient. But that is a convenience that we should always be wary of.

dasil003 14y ago

One of the traits that allows us to be competent programmers is a pedantry about technical terminology. Why overload the concept of message forwarding with a second term if what that term was originally coined to describe is a useful paradigm? I had never heard of this distinction, however it immediately made sense to me because I've run into this case in Ruby where using a ruby "delegate" object actually was much more verbose than I had envisioned because of all the context I had to bring over to the delegate object one way or another. In the event I decided "delegation" was not right because the implementation necessarily violated the Law of Demeter. So yeah I think pragmatically it does matter.

true_religion 14y ago
> One of the traits that allows us to be competent programmers I think we've failed then since we've totally overloaded and confused basic concepts such as weak/strong typing and dynamic/static typing. To make matters worse, those are cases where we as programmers invented to terminology at hand and didn't just appropriate it into a programming context.
- petercooper 14y ago
  Since you brought up typing, you might enjoy this related confusion: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/9154388/does-untyped-also-mean-dynamically-typed-in-the-academic-cs-world http://stackoverflow.com/questions/9154388/does-untyped-also...
btilly 14y ago
I agree that there are cases where pedantry is necessary for programmers. That does not mean that pedantry is necessarily valuable. In this case a distinction is being drawn that would make "delegation" mean something that is worse from the point of view of good software design, which would leave the thing that is better software design without its commonly understood name. Doing this would create negative value.
- dasil003 14y ago
  I'm not following your point. I'm saying that true delegation as defined by the article is in fact a useful tool for good software design. Maybe not as broadly useful as standard message forwarding, but something which deserves its own term.
  - btilly 14y ago
    Delegation as defined by the article makes every method call made by the delegated to class part of the programming interface that you need to be aware of when choosing to delegate. Delegation as defined by GoF makes only a specified set of callbacks be part of that interface. That says that delegation as defined by GoF does more to promote modularity than the original definition, and therefore is more often going to be preferred in good software design over that defined by the article. This is not to say that there aren't cases where what the article promotes is not convenient. Violating modularity is usually convenient. But that is a convenience that we should always be wary of.