Attributes and API usability

re: Attributes and API usability

Andrey Skvortsov — Thu, 06 May 2004 18:03:00 GMT

Attributes as concept is a good thing no doubt,declarative programming and AOP is always good thing but implementation can be improved by providing completely decoupled alternative among other things IMHO.

re: Attributes and API usability

Mike Dunn — Sun, 09 May 2004 03:44:00 GMT

Preface: My only exposure to attributes has been ATL in VC 7.1 (I don't write managed code at the moment).

I feel very uneasy about putting huge chunks of functionality in attributes, mostly because they seem to be this magical black box. Just a couple of days ago, I was working with a friend over IM to get an attributed ATL sample working for him. We were stumped on why the .rgs file wasn't being read. Because all the registration stuff was generated by attributes (the C code didn't have DllRegisterServer() or UpdateRegistry()) I had no way at all to debug it. In regular ATL I could just set a breakpoint on DllRegisterServer() and step through it.

I also find heavily-attributed code extremely hard to read. When there's actual _code_ there, I can usually figure out what it's meant to do just by a careful reading. When there are attributes sprinkled all over, I have to bounce back and forth between the code and the docs, figure out what magic the attributes do, and then remember it all.

RE: Attributes and API usability

mearls@hotmail.com (Michael Earls) — Mon, 10 May 2004 02:09:00 GMT

I was thinking about this just the other day. I think that generally, attributes in code are awesome. I believe that they can provide very important functionality in with very little maintenance effort and extremely easy implementation.

However, I also believe that as more and more library/framework creators catch the Attribute fever, we're going to have far too many of them decorating everything. I think it might be time to search out an alternative way to represent the attributes (if not representation, then manageability, but that implies that there might be yet another tool to manage attributes, giving us a less usable IDE for our more usale API).

Anyway, I think we'll start to see a problem as we get too many attributes in our code.

Attributes and API usability revisited

stevencl's WebLog — Thu, 13 May 2004 03:26:00 GMT

Attributes and API usability revisited

stevencl's WebLog — Thu, 13 May 2004 03:30:00 GMT

Attributes and API usability revisited

stevencl's WebLog — Thu, 13 May 2004 05:05:00 GMT

stevencl s WebLog Attributes and API usability | Outdoor Decor

stevencl s WebLog Attributes and API usability | Outdoor Decor — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 00:27:21 GMT

PingBack from http://outdoordecoration.info/story.php?id=1291