[awongh]

I understand about making code more clear, but I'm not sure adding complexity/boilerplate solves that in every case- the even more extreme case would be to do away with the class entirely and just have a hash type property that gets passed around.... his very verbose counter-argument is the other extreme, and while I see his point, I tend to want to start with the property and only move towards the "rich object" when I'm sure that it's the best solution....

[solnic]

I think people miss the fact that I wrote about a code smell, which means a potential problem in your code. I don't say you shouldn't be using primitives. I say that there are cases where you should use rich, custom objects, that will simplify your code and improve design.

[awongh]

absolutely there are those cases, maybe it was just an over simplified example.

Although I also wouldn't say that it simplifies your code... What it does is make the api to that class/object more explicit. At the very least you are keeping the complexity level the same, but you might also be making it more complicated. If you're just talking about the idea of OO encapsulation in general, that's another thing.... Not that I disagree that an explicit api is a good thing.