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by js8 1831 days ago
This might be more readable if setting up those things doesn't involve a set of common variables (say a GUI style in this example) that can affect them. If it does, then you have to pass them around (into these functions) and it makes more difficult to figure out, if one of these variables changes, what all is affected by it (you have to look up all those methods).

In short, I don't think adding depth to a hierarchy of function composition is always an answer. Flatter hierarchies can be easier to understand too.
2 comments
Izkata 1831 days ago
I think it makes the source of such a styling bug/flow of what's affected a lot more obvious than having to find the reference in each line of the implementation details:

  addHorizontalScrollbar($style);
  addVerticalScrollbar($style);
  addHeader();
  addDayColums($style);
  addFooter($style);
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perl4ever 1831 days ago
>setting up those things doesn't involve a set of common variables

So...object methods?

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js8 1831 days ago
So what with them? I don't see how they solve the problem.

What you seem to suggest is refactor the original code (which presumably was a single function to set everything up) so that variables used and the substeps are in one module (your new object), and the code that uses all of this is in another module. I am not convinced this really follows "high cohesion, low coupling" dogma, since you put together things that might be less related (different style variables) into the same module, and created a function, which almost all it does is calling into another module, and is highly dependent on it.

The problem ultimately is data relationships in the code can be a general graph, and trying to put a general graph into a hierarchical structure (much less one that actually has to follow the structure of operations on the data) always has to break cycles in some way. And how much you can really do it depends on cyclomatic number of the graph, and if it's high, no strategy is going to be good. AFAICT most of the OOP strategies of "dealing" with this problem are just creating more nodes in the graph, making the structure bigger, but not really reducing the cyclomatic number.

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