On Tue, Oct 28, 2003 at 09:34:25AM -0800, Bradd W. Szonye wrote:
> > bear wrote:
> >> My experience though with people providing "uniform APIs" is that it
> >> creates a strong temptation to regard the underlying data structures
> >> as interchangeable modules, without regard to the efficiency of
> >> operations in those structures.  This becomes a design requirement,
> >> and then people restrict their use of primitives to just those
> >> primitives available in *all* of the potential modules.
>
> xxxxxx@freenetproject.org wrote:
> > Thats hardly a design issue.  Thats more a matter of bad management or
> > design on the part of the end user.
>
> Please, quit trying to dodge responsibility on this issue. Some designs
> are error-prone. While *some* of the responsibility falls on the people
> who actually make the errors, a *large* part of it falls on the designer
> who keeps producing error-prone designs even after he's been informed of
> the problem.

All interfaces can be badly programmed to, particularly in OO structures
where there is a superclass with less functionality than the subclass.
Its just not a valid argument to say "This sucks because people might
only use the general functionality".  Period.