> On Jun 27, 2024, at 2:11 PM, Tim Düsterhus <t...@bastelstu.be> wrote:
> Marking a class as 'static' *does* affect how the class may be used and thus
> the static-ness is part of the public API. Therefore it should be a keyword.
> Everything else would also be inconsistent with final classes effectively
> making all members final and readonly classes making all members readonly.
Very insightful; that is a great rule of thumb.
>> I also believe that static classes should be implictly final. Given that no
>> objects of such a class can exist, they cannot be exchanged by a different
>> class anyways
I object here.
There are functions in classes that I have built in the past that are static
and also benefit from inheritance. Could they be called directly on the base
class; yes? But that is less elegant and increases complexity with two levels
of inheritance are needed.
Specifically the functionality I am thinking of is the base class is generic
functionality for factory functions and then child factory functions implement
use-case specific logic for the type of the object produced. For example, each
of these functions has a MakeNew(...) function, and children call
self::MakeNew(...).
Base
-- Term
-- User
-- BasePost
-- Post
-- Page
That is a subset of classes I used, and those classes were designed for use
with WordPress.
Further, these classes implemented "hooks" in WordPress. Using inheritance
allowed all the hooks to be managed without repeating them in many places,
being able to modify them for a class-specific need, and also without
accidentally forgetting to add them.
>> and inheritance is not meant for code reuse.
Just because code reuse in inheritance can be problematic it does not have to
be in all-cases. Moderation in all things. I used that approach for 10+ years
and never once had any of the problems people claim about using inheritance for
code reuse. This was likely because my needs were constrained by the use-case
and by nature did not grow out of control with complexity.
So I would really hate to finally get static classes but still not be able to
use them as intended for select use-cases only because someone decided without
knowing all applicable use-cases that they did not like the idea of people
using inheritance.
-Mike
