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Message:
why do you feel strongly that runtime info is bad?
Posted by Sundar Narasimhan on 07 Feb 1999, 9:35 AM
Hi, Bill: Perhaps you didn't quite intend this but I can think of several
examples where use of run-time information can add considerably to an application's flexibility. Indeed, I think the present
JavaBean design and tools that are coming out reflect the limitation of the view (and one that you seem to express) that
such use of run-time information should be limited to builder tools. I think it's a way of gaining flexibility and not losing it,
if you design your application to be able to handle
any Java object that can be thrown at it :) Always having to know
the type of things that are coming at you is a woeful left-over
from strong-typing fanatics. Here's an example to illustrate my point:
- if you were to design a form-based application would you rather
buy a forms-tool and start hacking each time you had to build
yet another form for yet another table/set of tables in the
database or would you write a generic class that can use runtime
information to customize the ui based on properties detected
at run-time?
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