This page contains an archived post to the Design Forum (formerly called the Flexible Java Forum) made prior to February 25, 2002. If you wish to participate in discussions, please visit the new Artima Forums.

Message:

Re: One sided comparison

Posted by Terry Braun on 22 Oct 1998, 6:30 AM

Doug,

Could you say more on the importance of type compatibility?

Much of your argument seems to be focused on the implementation
and performance cost of using composition. Although these are
certainly important and in some cases critical, much of my work
seems to be either "evolving" products or building models of
systems. In both of these cases, the cost benefit for me has
been swinging decisively toward composition.

If you accept or even speculate that composition is the way
to go, the result is a proliferation of classes and instances.
And while the performance cost is there, I think the crucial
problem with this approach is how to handle the very large
number of instances and associations.