[bt-devel] Feature-a-thon

[Jaak Ristioja]

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To save some time for some people, I must note that this letter is about
C++ code refactoring in BibleTime rather than the feature-a-thon.

On 01.01.2010 22:20, 'Kang Sun' wrote:
> * Jaak Ristioja <Ristioja at gmail.com> wrote on [2010/01/01 11:34]:
>>
>> On 01.01.2010 19:13, 'Kang Sun' wrote:
>>> The roadmap is a really good idea.  I would also like to see a design 
>>> plan for the APIs as well.
>>
>> What exactly do you have in mind by "a design plan for the APIs"? Are we
>> discussing interfacing with other software? Please share.
>  
> No, I'm thinking of standardizing how the public interfaces of some 
> classes are laid out.  This is to keep things stable when new features 
> are added, so that the new code doesn't need to be constantly updated to 
> the public interfaces.  Of course, refactoring can go on at full speed 
> on the private implementation side.
BT is a small project. Binary compatibility is definately not an issue
right now. What remains is that when changing public interfaces means we
might have to refactor other parts of code that use these interfaces.
Personally I don't find it difficult to do nor see it as a problem to do
so if our code is modular/re-usable enough (e.g. parts can be put
together like a puzzle that interact with each other, parts can be
removed, replaced etc). In addition it is sometimes inevitable that
public interfaces of classes change.

> Since we have been talking about a major refactoring for a while, now 
> might be a good time to discuss best practices and design patterns that 
> will be used for the base classes and other more upper level classes.  
> There are issues like having the same private data member of the same 
> type existing in each inheritance level of a derived class.  Are so many 
> copies really needed or is there a need for a getter/setter method to 
> provide access to derived classes?  It makes the code hard to maintain 
> and hard to understand (at least to me).
I didn't wholly understand you at this point but I agree that this is a
source of confusion. I think that subclasses should not override any
members/methods of their superclass, except reimplement methods which
are declared virtual.

> I would like to see a stronger adherence to best practices.  We have 
> Effective C++ in our reading list, but we often (including myself) don't 
> follow them.  Sure, they are guidelines, but there should be a good 
> reason to deviate from them in general.  If not, then we should remove 
> it from the reading list because it will add confusion to any new 
> members of the project who are trying to adhere to them.  Best practices 
> (although not agreed upon by everyone) do improve the quality of the 
> code and make us better programmers.  There is a broad consensus behind 
> most of what is espoused in Effective C++.  
Sure. Unfortunally we might disagree on what the best practices are.
Personally I haven't read Effective C++ for a number of reasons, the
most important ones being the lack of time to do so and the free
availability of this book, since I don't consider ordering it from
abroad to be worth that much of my money. Either way I think it to be
proper that the books on http://devel.bibletime.info/wiki/Programming
are listed under the headline "Recommended books" rather than
"Compulsory books". We have not agreed to enforce the guidelines of any
of these books. And its rather of question of a broad consensus between
BT developers than the general C++ community or readers of a specific book.

> While we are talking about features to improve BT, let's also look at 
> coding practices that can also improve BT.  Let's encourage each other 
> to use them.  Let's teach them to each other.  I have plenty to learn 
> from you guys.
Agreed. This is definately something to discuss with all our C++
developers at some time, but it's out of scope of the feature-a-thon.
Perhaps we should gather all our C++ devs and also have a
refactor-a-thon to discuss such issues?

God bless!
Jaak
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