On Thu, Jan 02, 2003 at 06:39:43PM -0500, Tom Jenkins wrote:
> well i'm really glad i started this thread.  i don't think i would have
> thought of wrapping the classes in UI classes.  makes a heck of alot of
> sense along with reusable classes with a minimum of "quixote specifics".

Separating the "model" from the "view" is always a good idea, even in
the context of web applications.  Our applications are laid out with a
separate UI package; for example it's "splat.web" for the SPLAT! bug
tracker.  We try to keep the amount of code in the UI subpackage as
small as possible.  Imagine that you have to throw away the UI package
and rewrite it.  How painful would that be?

Another important reason to keep the UI package small is that UI code is
hard to test.  We like unit tests but we haven't figured out how to
write UI unit tests that don't suck.  Obviously minimizing the amount of
lightly tested code is a good thing.

I know I'm preaching to the choir but if feels good to share some of my
hard earned experience.  Maybe someone will stumble into the archive and
find my ramblings of some value. :-)

Happy belated New Year everyone.

  Neil