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Comments on Are there practical reasons for designing a method-only class/object?

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Are there practical reasons for designing a method-only class/object?

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Are there practical reasons for designing/implementing a method(s)-only class/object?

Follow-up background notes:

This question is for languages that are not exclusively Object-Oriented, for example, Python and Perl. So languages that can have classes/instances and top-level independent functions.

The event that started me thinking about this is that was reading some code that is a mixture of classes/object and independent functions. I wonder what things to evaluate when thinking about whether/is some of the independent functions should be grouped to classes/object.

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1 comment thread

Sure, i guess... (2 comments)
Sure, i guess...
elgonzo‭ wrote over 2 years ago · edited over 2 years ago

Depends entirely how you would define "practical reason" and how narrow or broad you understand the term "class". Is the mere existence of method-only classes in a runtime or framework (such as System.Object in .NET/C#, or java.lang.object in Java) already "practical reasons" enough to answer your question? Does the term "class" in your question include abstract classes and/or static (uninstantiable) classes, or only instantiable/concrete classes?

Skipping 1 deleted comment.

CodeFarmer‭ wrote over 2 years ago · edited over 2 years ago

Those are good points. When I posted the question I was thinking of 'only instantiable/concrete classes' but you bring up some additional cases. The reason for the initial question is that I was reading through some code in a language that allows functions as well as classes/object and I go to wondering what design considerations would one think about in deciding whether to leave the functions as single functions or group some of them as methods in a method only class.