> I've read in some recent posts that Clorujians prefer data to APIs. I'm not > sure I understand what this means, in practice. When I'm in the early stages > of developing an application, the data structures undergo a great deal of > change. One of the ways, I isolate parts of the code from these sorts of > changes is by writing accessor functions. Maybe this is OO thinking but it > seems to me a wise application of DRY. > > Would these accessor functions be considered an API? If so, why should I > prefer accessing the raw data structure? If not, what is constitutes an API?
(1) You always have to choose a representation for your data. (2) Having chosen a data representation, if you make an accessor function API, you now have two representations. This is the very opposite of DRY. If you think that the representation implied by the accessor functions is better/more stable than the data representation, then choose a data representation like the one implied by your accessor functions. (3) If you have helper functions for dealing with a particular representation, those helpers can and should be separate from the representation itself. For example, a customer order is some combination of maps, vectors, etc. totalPrice is never a member function of some accessor-riddled Order object -- it is instead a plain function that knows how to navigate a data representation (or, via a la carte polymorphism, many different representations). Cheers, Stu Stuart Halloway Clojure/core http://clojure.com -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Clojure" group. To post to this group, send email to clojure@googlegroups.com Note that posts from new members are moderated - please be patient with your first post. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to clojure+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/clojure?hl=en
