Communities

Writing
Writing
Codidact Meta
Codidact Meta
The Great Outdoors
The Great Outdoors
Photography & Video
Photography & Video
Scientific Speculation
Scientific Speculation
Cooking
Cooking
Electrical Engineering
Electrical Engineering
Judaism
Judaism
Languages & Linguistics
Languages & Linguistics
Software Development
Software Development
Mathematics
Mathematics
Christianity
Christianity
Code Golf
Code Golf
Music
Music
Physics
Physics
Linux Systems
Linux Systems
Power Users
Power Users
Tabletop RPGs
Tabletop RPGs
Community Proposals
Community Proposals
tag:snake search within a tag
answers:0 unanswered questions
user:xxxx search by author id
score:0.5 posts with 0.5+ score
"snake oil" exact phrase
votes:4 posts with 4+ votes
created:<1w created < 1 week ago
post_type:xxxx type of post
Search help
Notifications
Mark all as read See all your notifications »
Q&A

Welcome to Software Development on Codidact!

Will you help us build our independent community of developers helping developers? We're small and trying to grow. We welcome questions about all aspects of software development, from design to code to QA and more. Got questions? Got answers? Got code you'd like someone to review? Please join us.

Post History

60%
+1 −0
Q&A Are there practical reasons for designing a method-only class/object?

It depends. Regarding "grouping functions/methods": as a general rule, you should group things that make sense to be together. Yes, it's a very broad and generic rule, and somewhat subjective. How...

posted 2y ago by hkotsubo‭

Answer
#1: Initial revision by user avatar hkotsubo‭ · 2021-10-01T11:44:12Z (over 2 years ago)
It depends.

Regarding "grouping functions/methods": as a general rule, you should group things that make sense to be together. Yes, it's a very broad and generic rule, and somewhat subjective. _How_ you group those things, though, depends on a lot of factors.

The other answers covered some aspects, I just want to add another one:

# Language constraints

In Java and C# everything must be inside a class. Hence, there's no way to create a top-level independent function in those languages. That's why, for example, the `Math` class (in both languages) has only a bunch of static methods (such as `Math.floor`/`Math.Floor` or `Math.sqrt`/`Math.Sqrt`) and static fields/constants (such as `Math.PI` or `Math.E`), and it can't be instantiated (you can't do `new Math()`).

That's the only way - imposed by the languages characteristics - to group lots of "independent functions" that make sense to be together. Those methods and fields don't need an instance, because they don't depend on any internal state (no instance variables needed), they just provide mathematical calculations that could all be top-level functions/variables. But the languages don't allow that, so they must be inside a class.

In Python, on the other hand, the `math` module provides the same functionalities ("math stuff") as independent functions (such as `math.floor` or `math.sqrt`) and variables/constants (`math.pi`, `math.e`). _Actually, they're not fully "independent", as they belong to the module, but anyway..._ Those functions don't need an internal state (AKA instance variables), so there's no point in creating a class for them. As the language doesn't require the creation of a class, they can simply be functions/variables and grouped together in a module.

In C there are no classes at all, but you can still group things together. Many mathematical functions can be found at `math.h` as "top-level independent functions".

So, to answer the question:

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

I'd say some of the reasons might be:

- the language requires a class and don't allow me to do it differently, or
- the methods need some internal state of an instance, hence they need a class

If the language doesn't have classes (or doesn't require everything to be inside a class), and the functions would work best as top-level/independent, then grouping things without classes, using whatever other mechanism the language offers, would be preferred.