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• Which reference provides your definition of "elegant" or "beautiful" code?

  - by Donnied

  This question is phrased in a very specific way - it asks for references. There was a similar question posted which was closed because it was considered a duplicate to a good code question. The Programmers FAQ points out that answers should have references - or its just an unproductive sharing of (seemingly) baseless opinions. There is a difference between shortest code and most elegant code. This becomes clear in several seminal texts: Dijkstra, E. W. (1972). The humble programmer. Communications of the ACM, 15(10), 859–866. Kernighan, B. W., & Plauger, P. J. (1974). Programming style: Examples and counterexamples. ACM Comput. Surv., 6(4), 303–319. Knuth, D. E. (1984). Literate programming. The Computer Journal, 27(2), 97–111. doi:10.1093/comjnl/27.2.97 They all note the importance of clarity over brevity. Kernighan & Plauger (1974) provide descriptions of "good" code, but "good code" is certainly not synonymous with "elegant". Knuth (1984) describes the impo rtance of exposition and "excellence of style" to elegant programs. He cites Hoare - who describes that code should be self documenting. Dijkstra (1972) indicates that beautiful programs optimize efficiency but are not opaque. This sort of conversation is qulaitatively different than a random sharing of opinions. Therefore, the question - Which reference provides your definition of "elegant" or "beautiful" code? "Which *reference*" is not subjective - anything else will most likely shut the thread down, so please supply *references* not opinions.

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• How can I convince management to deal with technical debt?

  - by Desolate Planet

  This is a question that I often ask myself when working with developers. I've worked at four companies so far and I've become aware of a lack of attention to keeping code clean and dealing with technical debt that hinders future progress in a software app. For example, the first company I worked for had written a database from scratch rather than use something like MySQL and that created hell for the team when refactoring or extending the application. I've always tried to be honest and clear with my manager when he discusses projections, but management doesn't seem interested in fixing what's already there and it's horrible to see the impact it has on team morale. What are your thoughts on the best way to tackle this problem? What I've seen is people packing up and leaving. The company then becomes a revolving door with developers coming in and out and making the code worse. How do you communicate this to management to get them interested in sorting out technical debt?

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• Single or multiple return statements in a function [on hold]

  - by Juan Carlos Coto

  When writing a function that can have several different return values, particularly when different branches of code return different values, what is the cleanest or sanest way of returning? Please note the following are really contrived examples meant only to illustrate different styles. Example 1: Single return def my_function(): if some_condition: return_value = 1 elif another_condition: return_value = 2 else: return_value = 3 return return_value Example 2: Multiple returns def my_function(): if some_condition: return 1 elif another_condition: return 2 else: return 3 The second example seems simpler and is perhaps more readable. The first one, however, might describe the overall logic a bit better (the conditions affect the assignment of the value, not whether it's returned or not). Is the second way preferable to the first? Why?

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• Checking form input data on submit with pure PHP [migrated]

  - by Leron

  I have some experience with PHP but I have never even try to do this wit pure PHP, but now a friend of mine asked me to help him with this task so I sat down and write some code. What I'm asking is for opinion if this is the right way to do this when you want to use only PHP and is there anything I can change to make the code better. Besides that I think the code is working at least with the few test I made with it. Here it is: <?php session_start(); // define variables and initialize with empty values $name = $address = $email = ""; $nameErr = $addrErr = $emailErr = ""; $_SESSION["name"] = $_SESSION["address"] = $_SESSION["email"] = ""; $_SESSION["first_page"] = false; if ($_SERVER["REQUEST_METHOD"] == "POST") { if (empty($_POST["name"])) { $nameErr = "Missing"; } else { $_SESSION["name"] = $_POST["name"]; $name = $_POST["name"]; } if (empty($_POST["address"])) { $addrErr = "Missing"; } else { $_SESSION["address"] = $_POST["address"]; $address = $_POST["address"]; } if (empty($_POST["email"])) { $emailErr = "Missing"; } else { $_SESSION["email"] = $_POST["email"]; $email = $_POST["email"]; } } if ($_SESSION["name"] != "" && $_SESSION["address"] != "" && $_SESSION["email"] != "") { $_SESSION["first_page"] = true; header('Location: http://localhost/formProcessing2.php'); //echo $_SESSION["name"]. " " .$_SESSION["address"]. " " .$_SESSION["email"]; } ?> <DCTYPE! html> <head> <style> .error { color: #FF0000; } </style> </head> <body> <form method="POST" action="<?php echo htmlspecialchars($_SERVER["PHP_SELF"]);?>"> Name <input type="text" name="name" value="<?php echo htmlspecialchars($name);?>"> <span class="error"><?php echo $nameErr;?></span> <br /> Address <input type="text" name="address" value="<?php echo htmlspecialchars($address);?>"> <span class="error"><?php echo $addrErr;?></span> <br /> Email <input type="text" name="email" value="<?php echo htmlspecialchars($email);?>"> <span class="error"><?php echo $emailErr;?></span> <br /> <input type="submit" name="submit" value="Submit"> </form> </body> </html>

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• Should comments say WHY the program is doing what it is doing? (opinion on a dictum by the inventor of Forth)

  - by AKE

  The often provocative Chuck Moore (inventor of the Forth language) gave the following advice (paraphrasing): "Use comments sparingly. Programs are self-documenting, with a modicum of help from mnemonics. Comments should say WHAT the program is doing, not HOW." My question: Should comments say WHY the program is doing what it is doing? Update: In addition to the answers below, these two provide additional insight. Beginner's guide to writing comments? http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/98609/62203

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• How can Agile methodologies be adapted to High Volume processing system development?

  - by luckyluke

  I am developing high volume processing systems. Like mathematical models that calculate various parameters based on millions of records, calculated derived fields over milions of records, process huge files having transactions etc... I am well aware of unit testing methodologies and if my code is in C# I have no problem in unit testing it. Problem is I often have code in T-SQL, C# code that is a SQL stored assembly, and SSIS workflow with a good amount of logic (and outcomes etc) or some SAS process. What is the approach YOu use when developing such systems. I usually develop several tests as Stored procedures in a designed schema(TEST) and then automatically run them overnight and check out the results. But this is only for T-SQL. And Continous integration IS hard. But the problem is with testing SSIS packages. How do You test it? What is Your preferred approach for stubbing data into tables (especially if You need a lot data initialization). I have some approach derived over the years but maybe I am just not reading enough articles. So Banking, Telecom, Risk developers out there. How do You test your mission critical apps that process milions of records at end day, month end etc? What frameworks do You use? How do You validate that Your ssis package is Correct (as You develop it)/ How do You achieve continous integration in such an environment (Personally I never got there)? I hope this is not to open-ended question. How do You test Your map-reduce jobs for example (i do not use hadoop but this is quite similar). luke Hope that this is not too open ended

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• Are "Compile to JavaScript" Frameworks Hostile to Continuous Integration?

  - by joshin4colours

  Lately we've been looking at ways to improve automated testing and related tooling of our enterprise-level GWT web app. I've realized that in some ways, GWT is a bit hostile to automated testing, mainly because of the nature of the long GWT compile times from Java to JS. This makes unit testing somewhat challenging, but it also puts some roadblocks up for testing in a CI environment. I've also found out that some of our build and deployment processes are somewhat complicated due to the nature of GWT's compile process. Is this a general problem for "compile to JS" frameworks for webapps? I don't have much experience with them, but I can see some potential problems for automated testing and continuous integration and deployment. Some issues I see: Long build and compile times preventing quick deployments Language the app is developed in != JS, preventing good unit testing Obfuscated JS in the actual app makes it more like a executable than a web app Are these issues present in other similar frameworks, or is this more a GWT issue?

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• Have you worked with a well designed application?

  - by Vilx-

  Inspired by this question, I started wondering - is there or has there ever been such a thing as a "well designed application"? One where the architecture would be perfect and no refactoring would ever be needed; code would be easy to read and understand even for someone new to the project; changes could be done with a 100% certainty that they won't break anything; etc? I must admit that whatever codebases I've worked with, they've all been more or less a mess. Even code that I start myself only stays organized at the start, and then slowly deteriorates as the time passes. I'm even starting to accept this as part of life and can't figure out whether I should be worried about that or not. So... is there such a thing as a "well designed application"? Or is all our code so shitty that there isn't even a point in trying to make it better, because it will never be good anyway?

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• Which are the most frequent exceptions thrown in Java applications? [on hold]

  - by Chris

  1. Do you know of any statistics about the frequency of exceptions (checked and unchecked) thrown at runtime in typical Java applications? for example: NullPointerException: 25% of all exceptions ClassCastException: 15% of all exceptions etc. 2. Which are the most frequent exceptions according to your own experiences? 3. Would you agree that the NullPointerException is generally the most often thrown exception? I am asking this question in the context of the compiler development of the PPL programming language (www.practical-programming.org). The goal is to auto-detect a maximum of frequent exceptions at compile-time. For example, detecting all potential NullPointerExceptions at compile-time leads to null-safe software which is more reliable.

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• Copy-and-Pasted Test Code: How Bad is This?

  - by joshin4colours

  My current job is mostly writing GUI test code for various applications that we work on. However, I find that I tend to copy and paste a lot of code within tests. The reason for this is that the areas I'm testing tend to be similar enough to need repetition but not quite similar enough to encapsulate code into methods or objects. I find that when I try to use classes or methods more extensively, tests become more cumbersome to maintain and sometimes outright difficult to write in the first place. Instead, I usually copy a big chunk of test code from one section and paste it to another, and make any minor changes I need. I don't use more structured ways of coding, such as using more OO-principles or functions. Do other coders feel this way when writing test code? Obviously I want to follow DRY and YAGNI principles, but I find that test code (automated test code for GUI testing anyway) can make these principles tough to follow. Or do I just need more coding practice and a better overall system of doing things? EDIT: The tool I'm using is SilkTest, which is in a proprietary language called 4Test. As well, these tests are mostly for Windows desktop applications, but I also have tested web apps using this setup as well.

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• What is the career path for a software developer/ programmer? [closed]

  - by Lo Wai Lun

  I've been working as a programmer for a few months and I often study CCNA , CISSP for future. Besides simple coding I was working on specs, designing applications, and all those around-like things. My question is, I want to be a information / system security specialist. what's the career path I should be aiming for? Is it like working on code for the rest of my life? :) Restart my career from the network engineer ? Or do programmers make a good manager-position people ? I know it's very subjective. Thing is, lately I find myself much more into the designing/working on specs part of the development project then the coding itself. How do you see it? Would you like to go from development to information security? Would you like to work on a project with a manager that used to be a coder?

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• How to tell your boss that he's a bad programmer? [closed]

  - by Doe

  Possible Duplicate: How to tell your boss that his programming style is really bad? There was a question about the boss having a bad programming style (weird booleans, empty loops, etc.) Having a bad/weird style does not imply being a bad programmer, but my situation is different. My boss outputs some really nasty code for the project, on which we are working together (just two of us). Examples: functions that span over several screens (big screens - 1900 x 1200) Deeply nested Conditional and Loop statements (up to 10 levels!!) Too much static variables, singletons, and both (singleton class with all the methods and members also static) Sometimes the code committed to the version control system does not even compile! Copy-Paste code instead of separating it into an independent function. Fail all the deadlines. "This's [C#|Java|Python] it shouldn't be efficient, that's why we loop all over the haystack to find the needle." "This's C/C++, it's fast enough to loop all over the haystack to find the needle." There is much more to mention... But the worst is that I have to redo much of the stuff he does, my code, which I try to keep clean is often polluted with above-mentioned atrocities. He's reaching 30 soon, so all his skills are established, and I don't even know if it's possible to change something. I like the project, but sometimes I just want to quit...

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• How to apply verification and validation on the following example

  - by user970696

  I have been following verification and validation questions here with my colleagues, yet we are unable to see the slight differences, probably caused by language barrier in technical English. An example: Requirement specification User wants to control the lights in 4 rooms by remote command sent from the UI for each room separately. Functional specification The UI will contain 4 checkboxes labelled according to rooms they control. When a checkbox is checked, the signal is sent to corresponding light. A green dot appears next to the checkbox When a checkbox is unchecked, the signal (turn off) is sent to corresponding light. A red dot appears next to the checkbox. Let me start with what I learned here: Verification, according to many great answers here, ensures that product reflects specified requirements - as functional spec is done by a producer based on requirements from customer, this one will be verified for completeness, correctness). Then design document will be checked against functional spec (it should design 4 checkboxes..), and the source code against design (is there a code for 4 checkboxes, functions to send the signals etc. - is it traceable to requirements). Okay, product is built and we need to test it, validate. Here comes our understanding trouble - validation should ensure the product meets requirements for its specific intended use which is basically business requirement (does it work? can I control the lights from the UI?) but testers will definitely work with the functional spec, making sure the checkboxes are there, working, labelled, etc. They are basically checking whether the requirements in functional spec were met in the final product, isn't that verification? (should not be, lets stick to ISO 12207 that only validation is the actual testing)

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• Modelling highly specific business requirements

  - by AndyBursh

  How can one go about modelling highly specific business requirements, which have no precedent in the system? Take for example the following requirement: When a purchase order contains N lines, is over X value in total and is being recorded against project Y, an email needs to be sent to persons A and B with the details This requirement supplements other requirements surrounding purchase orders, but comes in at a much later date in response to some ongoing problem elsewhere in the business. Persons A and B are not part of any role or group in the system, and don't hold any specific responsibility; they are simply the two people the business has appointed to receive these emails in this very specific case. Projects are also data driven, so project Y has no special properties to distinguish it from any other project. The only way to identify it is to compare its identifier to a magic number. How can one go about modelling this kind of case without introducing too much additional complexity? That I can think of right now, there are a couple of options. Perform the checks and actions inline with the existing code. Here we find the correct spot in the code, check the conditions in the requirement and send the emails to hardcoded addresses. Of course this is fraught with issues. At the very least it stops working if one of these people leaves or changes their email address. At worst you have to ensure that any tests and test data are aware that additional actions are taken for a specific set of criteria. Introduce some form of events system. Here we introduce an eventing system, so that we might react to some event, and fulfil the requirement outside of the usual path of execution. This sounds like a cleaner solution than option 1, but the work involved is ultimately probably slightly overkill for this one small requirement. That said, having it in place does allow the system to handle these kinds of specific requirements consistently and easily in the future. Are there any other (good/better) ways of handling highly specific requirements? I mean other than telling the other parts of the business no!

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• Inspection, code review - is it really testing?

  - by user970696

  ISTQB, Wikipedia or other sources classify verification acitivities (reviews etc.) as a static testing, yet other do not. If we can say that peer reviews and inspections are actually a kind of a testing, then a lot of standards do not make sense (consider e.g. ISO which say that validation is done by testing, while verification by checking of work products) - it should at least say dynamic testing for validation, shouldn't it? I am completing master thesis dealing with QA and I must admit that I have never seen worse and more ambiguous and contradicting literature than in this field :/ Do you think (and if so, why) that static testing is a good and justifiable term or should we stick to testing and static checks/analysis?

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• How to examine the speed of your code results?

  - by Goma

  Hi. Whatever was your choice PHP, ASP.NET, Ruby On Rails or even JSP. You know that you can develop a website to give a specific result or to do some tasks in many ways. I mean you can change your code to make it shorter (or for any other reason) but to give the same result. In this case how do you test which code was faster to excute so you choose it to make your website faster? I mean do you have any tools or ideas in how to test the time of execution for your code and compare it with time of execution after you do some edit?

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• General List of Common Programming Errors

  - by javamonkey79

  As one journey's from apprentice to journeyman to master I've noticed that one accumulates a list of best practices for things they've been bitten by. Personally, I write most of my stuff in java & SQL so my list tends to be slated towards them. I've accumulated the following: When doing list removal, always reverse iterate Avoid adding items to a list you are currently iterating on Watch out for NullPointerExceptions Now, I know there are language specific "common errors" links out there like this one. And I'm also aware of the pragmatic programmer tips, Martin Fowler's "code smells". Does anyone know of any good lists out there of things like I've listed above (re: list removal, adding items, etc). My guess is that there are some good QA folks out there that can probably throw me a bone here. I'm not looking for things the compiler can catch - I'm looking for common things that cause bugs. In the event that there isn't a list out there already then I welcome posting your own findings here. Thanks in advance!

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• What is logical cohesion, and why is it bad or undesirable?

  - by Matt Fenwick

  From the c2wiki page on coupling & cohesion: Cohesion (interdependency within module) strength/level names : (from worse to better, high cohesion is good) Coincidental Cohesion : (Worst) Module elements are unrelated Logical Cohesion : Elements perform similar activities as selected from outside module, i.e. by a flag that selects operation to perform (see also CommandObject). i.e. body of function is one huge if-else/switch on operation flag Temporal Cohesion : operations related only by general time performed (i.e. initialization() or FatalErrorShutdown?()) Procedural Cohesion : Elements involved in different but sequential activities, each on different data (usually could be trivially split into multiple modules along linear sequence boundaries) Communicational Cohesion : unrelated operations except need same data or input Sequential Cohesion : operations on same data in significant order; output from one function is input to next (pipeline) Informational Cohesion: a module performs a number of actions, each with its own entry point, with independent code for each action, all performed on the same data structure. Essentially an implementation of an abstract data type. i.e. define structure of sales_region_table and its operators: init_table(), update_table(), print_table() Functional Cohesion : all elements contribute to a single, well-defined task, i.e. a function that performs exactly one operation get_engine_temperature(), add_sales_tax() (emphasis mine). I don't fully understand the definition of logical cohesion. My questions are: what is logical cohesion? Why does it get such a bad rap (2nd worst kind of cohesion)?

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• How to justify rewriting/revamping legacy software in a business case?

  - by sxthomson

  I work for a great little software company which makes good revenue from our main software package. The problem for me is that it's almost unmaintainable. It's written in Delphi 7 (has upgraded versions over time) and has been worked on by a lot of developers over the past 20 or so years. The software lacks any meaningful architecture - there's no object orientation whatsoever, horrible amounts of cyclical dependencies and an over-reliance on global variables to name just a few things. Another huge thing for me is Delphi 7 does NOT support 64-bit. The problem here for me is that my management team don't care about technical things, they want to know why they should care. Obviously that's expected, so what I'm asking here is for some guidance, or tales, or pitfalls about this kind of thing. There's a few things I would love to include, namely for me, the length of time taken to debug/write a feature in "legacy" code, versus coherent, well structured OO code. Does anyone know of any blog posts or the like where this is talked about? For us in the company this is a huge reason. Despite being decent developers we feel like writing a new feature is just piling more rubbish on top. On top of that, even for me who has a decent level of understanding of the code, changing things is infuriating - a small change can have a ridiculous domino effect. Anyone have any experiences they'd like to share?

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• What do you think about RefactoringManifesto.org?

  - by Gan

  Quite some time ago, on December 19 2010, a site called RefactoringManifesto.org was launched. The site is to voice concerns about refactoring. It lists ten main points as shown below (head over the website to see more details): Make your products live longer! Design should be simple so that it is easy to refactor. Refactoring is not rewriting. What doesn't kill it makes it stronger. Refactoring is a creative challenge. Refactoring survives fashion. To refactor is to discover. Refactoring is about independence. You can refactor anything, even total crap. Refactor – even in bad times! What do you think about this? Would you sign the manifesto? If not, why?

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• C: What is a good source to teach standard/basic code conventions to someone newly learning the language?

  - by shan23

  I'm tutoring someone who can be described as a rank newcomer in C. Understandably, she does not know much about coding conventions generally practiced, and hence all her programs tend to use single letter vars, mismatched spacing/indentation and the like, making it very difficult to read/debug her endeavors. My question is, is there a link/set of guidelines and examples which she can use for adopting basic code conventions ? It should not be too arcane as to scare her off, yet inclusive enough to have the basics covered (so that no one woulc wince looking at the code). Any suggestions ?

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• Entry level engineer question regarding memory mangement

  - by Ealianis

  It has been a few months since I started my position as an entry level software developer. Now that I am past some learning curves (e.g. the language, jargon, syntax of VB and C#) I'm starting to focus on more esoteric topics, as to write better software. A simple question I presented to a fellow coworker was responded with "I'm focusing on the wrong things." While I respect this coworker I do disagree that this is a "wrong thing" to focus upon. Here was the code (in VB) and followed by the question. Note: The Function GenerateAlert() returns an integer. Dim alertID as Integer = GenerateAlert() _errorDictionary.Add(argErrorID, NewErrorInfo(Now(), alertID)) vs... _errorDictionary.Add(argErrorID, New ErrorInfo(Now(), GenerateAlert())) I originally wrote the ladder and rewrote it with the "Dim alertID" so that someone else might find it easier to read. But here was my concern and question. "Should one write this with the Dim AlertID, it would in fact take up more memory; finite but more, and should this method be called many times could it lead to an issue? How will .NET handle this object AlertID. Outside of .NET should one manually dispose of the object after use (near the end of the sub)." I want to ensure I become a knowledgeable programmer that does not just rely upon garbage collection. Am I over thinking this? Am I focusing on the wrong things?

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• What should NOT be included in comments? (opinion on a dictum by the inventor of Forth)

  - by AKE

  The often provocative Chuck Moore (inventor of the Forth language) gave the following advice (paraphrasing): "Use comments sparingly. Programs are self-documenting, with a modicum of help from mnemonics. Comments should say WHAT the program is doing, not HOW." My question: Should comments say WHY the program is doing what it is doing? Update: In addition to the answers below, these two provide additional insight. 1: Beginner's guide to writing comments? 2: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/98609/62203

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• How do you QA and release software quickly with a large team?

  - by sadadasd

  My work used to be a smaller team. We had less than 13 devs for a while. We are now growing rapidly, and are over 20 with plans to be over 30 in a few months. Our process for QA'ing and releasing each build is no longer working. We currently have everyone develop the new code, and stick it onto a staging environment. A few days before our weekly release, we would freeze the staging environment and QA everything. By our normal release time, everything was usually deemed acceptable and pushed out the door to the main site. We reached a point where our code got too big so we could no longer regress the entire site each week in QA. We were ok with that, we just made a list of everything important and only covered that and the new stuff. Now we are reaching a point where all the new stuff each week is becoming too big and too unstable. Our staging environment is really buggy week after week, and we are usually 1-2 hours behind the normal release time. As the team is growing further, we are going to drown with this same process. We are re-evaluating everything, and I personally am looking for suggestions / success stories. Many companies have been where before and progressed beyond, we need to do the same

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• Prefer class members or passing arguments between internal methods?

  - by geoffjentry

  Suppose within the private portion of a class there is a value which is utilized by multiple private methods. Do people prefer having this defined as a member variable for the class or passing it as an argument to each of the methods - and why? On one hand I could see an argument to be made that reducing state (ie member variables) in a class is generally a good thing, although if the same value is being repeatedly used throughout a class' methods it seems like that would be an ideal candidate for representation as state for the class to make the code visibly cleaner if nothing else. Edit: To clarify some of the comments/questions that were raised, I'm not talking about constants and this isn't relating to any particular case rather just a hypothetical that I was talking to some other people about. Ignoring the OOP angle for a moment, the particular use case that I had in mind was the following (assume pass by reference just to make the pseudocode cleaner) int x doSomething(x) doAnotherThing(x) doYetAnotherThing(x) doSomethingElse(x) So what I mean is that there's some variable that is common between multiple functions - in the case I had in mind it was due to chaining of smaller functions. In an OOP system, if these were all methods of a class (say due to refactoring via extracting methods from a large method), that variable could be passed around them all or it could be a class member.

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