Re: little ObjectiveC poll.

[Richard Frith-Macdonald]

On 2 Feb 2006, at 05:34, Sheldon Gill wrote:

> Lloyd Dupont wrote:
> > I haven't really programmed in ObjectiveC since a long time now.
> > But I have to work with my boss's source, developed on MacOSX all  
> > in ObjectiveC.
> > Something puzzles me and I wonder if it's normal in  
> > "ObjectiveC" (or C)..... (or if I'mjust unlucky ;-)
> > His files are very long (most of them over a few 10 of thousands   
> > lines) and some methods are very long too (up to 1 to 2 or 3  
> > thousands line. 1 thousands line is common, 3 is rare).
> > Now I wonder, is it "common practice" in ObjectiveC, or is it just  
> > my boss?
>
> I don't think its common practice in most programming languages.
>
> One of the metrics used for program maintainability is length per  
> function. Higher length, less maintainable.
>
> Take a look at the whole refactoring movement and most "good  
> programming practice" information out there. You'll see that  
> shorter is generally better and preferred.

Yes ... it's a decent rule of thumb ... but of course it's always  
possible to make them *too* short, so that you make things more  
complex overall (lots of function/methods) and end up separating bits  
of code that flow well together, and make things inefficient by  
imposing lots of extra call overheads.  I find this is a problem in  
the C++ coding culture.

Anyway, methods thousands of lines long seem *very* large to me, I  
would have thought that 1-200 lines was normal with most methods  
being in the 10-50 region (a liberal sprinkling of one line accessors  
keeping the average length down).