class properties in c++

[Lucas Vogel]

So anyways, 

I was thinking maybe a good idea for getting/setting properties would be
like this:

RETVAL PropertyName();
void   SetPropertyName(RETVAL *var);

with RETVAL being the data type of the property being set. My reasoning for
this approach, and not one that returns an error code, is because it would
at least seem that the error handling would be taken care of by the class
itself(since this is C++ and not C). 

What do you guys think? 

Not to get you guys off-topic, or anything :)

Thanks,

Lucas



> -----Original Message-----
> From: Rob Wehrli [mailto:rwehrli@azpower.com]
> Sent: Friday, June 15, 2001 11:26 AM
> To: plug-devel@lists.PLUG.phoenix.az.us
> Subject: Re: class properties in c++
> 
> 
> > I understand that for the mediocre engineer names mean 
> nothing. But to
> take
> 
> What planet are you from, man?  You're saying that the 
> "difference" between
> "function" and "method" and "operation" *names* is some kind 
> of metric for
> determining what makes mediocre engineers?
> 
> > care of every aspect of you job is what separates the 
> mediocre from the
> 
> Spoken like a true "QA" guy...my point is that we're not 
> perfect.  We, as a
> species, are not so good at taking care of *every* aspect of 
> "you" job.  We
> make mistakes.  We're error prone.  We are mediocre as a 
> species because of
> our errors and our methods that allow us to send them out 
> even when we know
> it.  However, perfection is not our goal.
> 
> 
> > great. Just like I tell some of the teaches I work with, if 
> we are sloppy
> in
> > our words, and names, we are sloppy in our work. After all 
> if the words,
> and
> 
> OK.  So you and some of the "teaches" you work with are 
> sloppy in your work
> because you pick your words less carefully than perfection 
> dictates.  Your
> admission that you're mediocre comes as no surprise when the 
> entire race is
> basically in the same boat.
> 
> > names, are just slung around, how will any one doing 
> maintenance on the
> code
> 
> So, now you're back on, pointing the finger at anyone who 
> calls a "method"
> (your choice of terms) a "function" (their choice of terms) 
> simply because
> of some pseudo-religious belief you have regarding naming 
> here?  I'm perhaps
> one of the stronger proponents of quality naming decision making and
> conventional naming practices.  If we assume that to be true and if we
> assume that I have any skill at all in it, wouldn't I be just 
> as "picky" as
> you about calling a method a function?  So what you're really 
> saying is,
> "Rob, you're a mediocre engineer because you are sloppily 
> calling methods
> functions."  Hell, I call them operations, too.  I guess that 
> I should be
> immediately excommunicated among C++ and OO programmers and 
> relegated to a
> life of writing spaghetti BASIC code the rest of my days.
> 
> > know what the intent was? After all this is the problem in 
> maintenance,
> > knowing what was indented so that the fix, or change, may be applied
> > properly.
> 
> Huh?  Knowing what was indented?  Do you mean intended?  
> Perhaps your word
> choices here are a reflection of your "if we are sloppy in 
> our word, and
> names, we are sloppy in our work" in practice?  Some kind of
> "self-fulfilling" prophecy?  By your own admission, we are 
> sloppy because we
> make errors.  Wow.  We better alert the media.  NEWS FLASH HUMANS MAKE
> ERRORS details at 6 and 10.
> 
> >
> > After all as any Object Oriented engineer knows, there are 
> many things
> from
> 
> Which engineering discipline is a OOE?  Is that electrical, 
> mechanical,
> civil, nuclear, chemical, biological...help me out here.
> 
> > structural engineering that do not fit the goal of OOE 
> (Object Oriented
> > Engineering). By the way, with many schools still teaching 
> structural
> > techniques, are you that certain that everyone knows what 
> we are talking
> > about?
> 
> Just because procedural programming (how did "engineering" 
> get infused with
> every kind of programming?) is still very common in many 
> schools doesn't
> mean that students are not familiar with OO concepts.  I'm 
> quite certain
> that YOU don't have a clue about what I'm talking about.  I 
> recall that you
> were the guy telling the PLUG devel world that a Dealer ISA 
> Player.  You
> were pushing your crap design onto this group as if it was 
> the world's best
> thing.  It must have had 100 "OOP holes" in it and now you're 
> saying "we"
> are mediocre because we are sloppy in making the *obvious* distinction
> between function and method when you couldn't "explain" it in 
> any reasonable
> way?  Get off your soapbox and get off of the notion that 
> you've got some
> kind of clue.  I don't resent you for not knowing.  It is 
> natural to not
> know something.  I resent you for spewing forth here in this 
> forum as if you
> DO know, when all you have is a set of BS opinions and quite a bit of
> *obvious* misinformation about what OO is really all about 
> and you think
> that you're too good for the rest of us who are just trying 
> to learn and
> share here.
> 
> Don't lump together simple sentences such as procedural 
> programming doesn't
> provide for the goals of OOP...especially by calling it "engineering."
> Structural Engineering is akin to building bridges, 
> skyscrapers and such,
> structural programming is entirely different.  Anyone who 
> would mix *these
> terms* is either trying to add "weight" to an argument or 
> simply a very poor
> user of terms.  I think that you'd be very hard pressed to find your
> proposed acronym "OOE" in any real place where OO is talked 
> about...except
> in such likely instances where it is just about ALWAYS accompanyied by
> "Software," as in Object Oriented Software Engineering.
> 
> 
> >
> > I would like to say that I am not trying to put any one down. As a
> manager,
> > and a teacher, I always try to improve everyone I work 
> with, or teach.
> Maybe
> 
> Are you really a "teacher?"  Whom do you teach?  Maybe you 
> should spend more
> time and energy trying to improve yourself and make yourself competent
> before "always" trying to improve others...especially in 
> situations where
> they're calling a method a function or some other relatively 
> synonymous
> term.  If you were so blasted right about this, why don't you 
> follow the
> trend of OOADers and say Operation?  I'm guessing that you'd 
> like to ramble
> on for hours about whether you prefer Booch to Jacobsen.  I 
> remember seeing
> oh soooo many posts on the various OO usenet groups regarding 
> your theories
> and findings.
> 
> > I live in a dream world, but I live to see the day when the 
> general public
> 
> Let me know when you finally wake up, because I, for one, am 
> getting tired
> of your "sharing" your dream world out loud.
> 
> > finds that software is reliable, dependable, and so useful they look
> forward
> > to using it. I can not stand hearing all the jokes about 
> software, and
> > software developers, producing crap, But after all the 
> general public has
> 
> If you can not stand it, then quit offering it.  What does it 
> take for you
> to just be one of the people searching for answers like the 
> rest of us?  Are
> we supposed to blindly follow your spewing that Dealer ISA 
> Player now?  How
> much thinking went into *that* design?  Why not lecture me at 
> length about
> your reasons for using interfaces-based models for inter-object
> communication?  What do you see as the pros and cons in 
> public, private and
> protected members?  Why not go in-depth about why you think 
> that Dealer is a
> specialization of Player? ...and why that would make such a 
> good OO design?
> 
> > developed the attitude "hey this is not Burger King you can 
> not have it
> your
> > way" and is this the right way to treat them? I can not see 
> how anyone can
> > be happy working in an industry that has the reputation for being a
> > necessary evil we have to live with.
> 
> There are those of us who have to fight the battles every day 
> that just
> because the simplicity and proliferation of tools has made it 
> easier for
> non-programmers to write programs, we do care about the 
> software we produce
> because we're professionals and we do take our work 
> seriously.  That is not
> to say that we do not make errors, in fact, we expect to make 
> many of them
> in the course of a development activity.  What we do is 
> design our programs
> in such a way that they enable us to make errors and make 
> changes in such a
> way as to fix them so that we can move onward.  I think that 
> it is clear
> that "we" will never mean "all."  And, these days, it seems that we is
> really a much smaller group than ever before...and that there 
> are WAY TOO
> MANY people who push their own little bent ideas at a 
> "unsuspecting" group
> of developing programmers because they are "teachers" and 
> "managers" and
> have some kind of way of talking as if they are right all the time.
> 
> >
> > All I am trying to do is to show that by taking care of 
> what we do, and
> > being the best at it, we can produce great software every 
> time and the
> > consumer wins when this happens.
> 
> If that is all you're trying to do, then stick to QA and let "real"
> programmers do the programming.  Catch the errors you find, let the
> programmers know about them so they can fix them and keep 
> trying to learn
> how to develop decent OO applications.  Don't make the rest 
> of us suffer
> through your discovery process as if you already know all the 
> answers and
> are better than the rest of us because you're a "manager" and you're a
> "teacher."  What are you going to teach us next?  Methods are 
> not functions?
> Just because you say it, it doesn't mean JACK.  If you're 
> going to go out on
> that limb, then, damn it, you better have a half-way decent 
> argument as to
> why the rest of us should change.  Either that, or KYFMS.  
> Think about it.
> All of this because you had to tell some guy that "methods, 
> not functions.
> I am right and you are wrong."  Tell me this, if Herb 
> Schildt, Andy Koenig
> and Scott Meyers were sitting in the room and they said "then 
> you call this
> function," would you pipe up and tell them that it isn't a 
> function, it is a
> method?  Of course, you could offer that they would never say 
> such a thing;
> but the last time I sat with Scott Meyers and gang and 
> talked, I didn't
> notice any distinct avoidance of "function" in their 
> vocabularies.  Also,
> Stan Lippmann uses functions synonymously with method and 
> operation in my
> discussions with him.  How about a random web site?
> http://mason.gmu.edu/~herwin/debug.html where a CS 310 class 
> professor named
> Harry Erwin uses "function" quite a bit, too.  Maybe your 
> teaching skills
> have surpassed his accomplishments, too.  Maybe, like the 
> rest of us, he's
> just backwards.
> 
> >
> > Thank You,
> >
> > David Demland
> > Qa/Process Manager
> > CADTEL Systems, Inc.
> > 11201 N. Tatum Ste. 200
> > Phoenix, AZ 85028
> > (602) 648-6054
> > Fax: (602) 953-4833
> > ddemland@cadtel.com
> 
> PS.  Sorry to be so "unkind" in this message.  Sometimes you 
> have to whack
> the drunken bum "upside" the head with the empty Vodka bottle 
> to let them
> know that they're a drunken bum.  Meanwhile, I think that 
> none of us want to
> "turn away" someone who really wants to be a "contributor" to 
> this list.  If
> you want to play nice, I'll play nice, too.  If you want to 
> spew forth, take
> it somewhere else.  No one promoted me to BS Police Chief, 
> but then again, I
> too care about how "we" as programmers are received by the 
> population of
> users.  I guess that if I'm ever looking for a job at CADTEL, 
> I'd better not
> use you as a reference, huh?  You're not going to like me from now on
> because I wouldn't play your little game of what you believe 
> is true is true
> for the rest of us too.  Why not admit to yourself that 
> you've only got half
> a clue and work like the rest of us at finding the other half 
> rather than
> spending time and energy telling us that you already found 
> it?  I think that
> once you come down off of your pedestal, the rest of us will 
> be glad to help
> you along the way.  Now it is my turn to jump off of the BS 
> Police pedestal
> and get back in line with all the other searchers.  Maybe go 
> to a patterns
> group meeting.  Learn from some of the many good programmers 
> around the
> valley that there are some really good things to do when you start
> "objectively" sharing.  :)
> 
> Take Care.
> 
> Rob!
> 
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