Comments on: Response: Are Naming Conventions Still Needed For Abstract Classes?

By: layer 3 switch

layer 3 switch — Sat, 19 Nov 2011 08:03:02 +0000

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By: Swati

Swati — Sun, 28 Nov 2010 01:01:15 +0000

I want to add one more point to
“Modern IDEs don’t let you instantiate an abstract class, even before saving / compiling.”
is
“Also Eclipse IDE provides an icon(Abstract/Concrete) before class name when Ctrl + space is hit”.

By: CertPal

CertPal — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 16:01:29 +0000

@Hauke Ingmar
Even at a later course in the project an ‘Abstract’ prefixed class might help you when you want to locate the class that has some boiler plate code. If you wanted to say, implement a new type of List, you could either implement List or extend AbstractList.

An interface identifier might help when you are looking for an interface to implement, just like when you are looking for an Abstract class to extend. An Interface standard which has an ‘I’ prefix is not common in the JDK API, atleast to my knowledge. But I do not have anything against it as such.

Thank you for sharing your thoughts.

By: Hauke Ingmar

Hauke Ingmar — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 15:43:30 +0000

I do not agree. Interfaces describe a type – a List implementation IS a List. It’s the type List that is always worked on. An interface identifier would tell nothing useful; the knowledge of working against an interface instead of working against any other type information doesn’t change how the object is used.
This is different with abstract classes. Abstract classes have to be extended to be useful. Sure, this information is covered with the “abstract” keyword. But the class has to be found. The “Abstract” naming convention helps (and “Default…”; see the comments to Adam’s post for this).
The “Abstract” naming convention should be noticed by the developer only sparsely – in fact only in the beginning of a project when the business specific subclasses are created. Afterwards the interfaces should be used for type information, the non-abstract classes for instantiation.

By: CertPal

CertPal — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 13:57:00 +0000

@raveman Agreed. The same argument does extend to Abstract and Interface.

By: raveman

raveman — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 12:06:31 +0000

You can use eclipse name convention(check out the source code) and interfaces have I prefix. It hurts no1 and helps a lot of people.

By: CertPal

CertPal — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 03:59:41 +0000

@Jeff
That is a good point Jeff. There are Interfaces that buck naming conventions too. While deciding on a name for an interface, the suggestion is usually to make it verb like. For example – Runnable, Serializable or to prefix it with ‘I’ or ‘IF’. There are interfaces that do not follow the convention, like List, Set, Map etc.

I guess the argument can be extended to interfaces as well. In fact I found a similar post on Adam’s blog about interfaces -> http://www.adam-bien.com/roller/abien/entry/in_the_age_of_dryness

By: Jeff

Jeff — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 18:06:45 +0000

You make some good points here. I wonder, though: what if we applied the same arguments to interfaces — would it make any more sense if it was ‘ListInterface’ instead of just ‘List’?