questions on PhanTango 'merger' (was Merging Tangobos into Tango) - long-term vision

[Lars Ivar Igesund]

0ffh wrote:

> Kris wrote:
>> Perhaps another way to ask these questions might be this:  what
>> type/style
>> of phobos functionlaity would you like to see in Tango?  BCS hinted at
>> this early on, and it would be useful to hear more of that ...
> 
> What I like most about Phobos is it's ease-of-use and it's style.

That you like the style is a fair point, but as I mentioned elsewhere, I
think that generally should be a secondary consideration. ease-of-use
however should be much more important. So my question is, does Phobos'
style make it easier for you to use? Is this due to free standing
functions, or because Phobos has few modules to search through? If the
latter, would a different type of docs, showing where to find functionality
in Tango, be of help?

> I know you are already working on stand-alone functions in Tango,
> and it's a good thing to do, IMHO. :)

It is not as if such functions are non-existant in Tango, so which exact
functionality do you think is better expressed through free standing
functions rather than objects? The answers of others shows that this
usually is wanted for objects where you often need only one operation on
the given object, even if others are available. This don't remove the fact
that an object (class) equally often is a useful abstraction, and when that
is established, free standing functions usually should be implemented as
wrappers around each method on the object, rather than the object being
implemented via free standing functions. This is why Tango looks as it does
today; we have avoided wrappers of our own code if possible, because they
degrade orthogonality of the API, and add more code to maintain. Whether we
have been to strict in enforcing that stance, is an open question.

> 
> Regards, Frank

-- 
Lars Ivar Igesund
blog at http://larsivi.net
DSource, #d.tango & #D: larsivi
Dancing the Tango