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NNTP-Posting-Date: Tue, 30 Aug 2011 11:05:15 -0500
Date: Tue, 30 Aug 2011 09:04:51 -0700
From: Patricia Shanahan <pats@acm.org>
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Subject: Re: Style Police (a rant)
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On 8/29/2011 5:50 PM, Eric Sosman wrote:
...
> Almost. It checks exactly what somebody tells it to check in the
> config file that somebody requires me to use.
...
> I'm just ranting at the absurdity of a criterion that says Object
> itself is "not designed for extension."
>

The criterion could be described better. Maybe it should be something
like "needs very careful design and documentation to achieve correct
extension". A big chunk of the Object API documentation, for example,
discusses the rules for equals, hashCode, and the relationship between
them in classes that override them.

It seems to me that the best use of this type of tool for that sort of
check is to prevent such things being done casually. The extra
hoop-jumping for turning off the check in a class is not that big
compared to the work that needs to be done to ensure correct extension.

Of course, if the powers-that-be forbid turning off the check, there is
a much bigger problem.

Patricia