Re: RFC: object-oriented two-dimensional ragged array tutorial

[Jenda]

The question is ... why?

I mean, what's

my @AoA;
$AoA[0] = [1,2,3];
$AoA[1] = [4,8];
$AoA[0][3] = 99;
...

if not a ragged array? I can set individual elements, I can query individual elements, I can set or get rows, ...

May I see some code that would benefit from your maze of classes?

[paulymer]

Yes, you have given an example of a ragged array. And yes, perl is great for building and manipulating them as you have shown. The difference between the example you give here and the examples I give in my tutorial is a nice contrast between programming in traditional perl5 and OOP with Moose. If you are working with simple scalars such as numbers or strings as elements of your data structures, then Moose would definitely be overkill. I can see your point, that my examples could be considered overkill since I have simply wrapped a 'Cell' class around a scalar string. If that was all I really needed to do, then yes, I went way overboard. I merely used this simple 'Cell' class as an example. Create any complex class with multiple attributes, multiple methods, and add dependencies between those attributes and methods, then tack on inheritance by sub-classing this complex class, and you might begin to see where this tutorial could be useful.

[BrowserUk]

Your argument is that you've used a simple, if ultimately unnecessary example, to demonstrate some of the more complex parts of OO; because you didn't want to detract from the techniques you were demonstrating with the detail of the classes you used to demonstrate them.

That is a fine argument.

However, without a convincing example of when it is necessary, (or beneficial in some tangible way), to use the techniques you are demonstrating, it leaves the demonstration looking like a solution looking for a problem.

So, the challenge to you is: show a realistic example of using those techniques that cannot be trivially and beneficially replaced with simpler, non-OO code.