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Message:

"Uniform access" may help

Posted by Jeevaka on September 19, 2000 at 1:06 AM

Yes, Java's direct inclusion of static final values can cause hidden problems that are hard to detect. I started reading the forum notes when I sensed the problem while reading the article.

A solution, though it may be a bit idealistic, is to follow the "uniform access" priciple. I.e. not to have any public fields and access to all fields through "get" functions. In the coffie cup example, we would be replacing "if (cup.getSize() == CoffeeCup.TALL)" by something like "if (cup.isTall())". How does that sound?