In January, I began a long series of articles about designing classes and objects. In this month's Design Techniques article, I'll continue that series but with a different approach. Up to now I have been writing in terms of design guidelines. In this article I'll be writing about idioms.
In my view, some design ideas are most effectively communicated via a set of guidelines, whereas other ideas can be communicated best as patterns or idioms. One of my main goals with this column is to "try out" material that I plan to put into my next book, Flexible Java (see Resources), by sending the material out to the public arena and getting feedback. Currently, I plan to organize Flexible Java around both guidelines and idioms, using each where it is most appropriate. In this and the next article, I'll be proposing some idioms on which I welcome any and all feedback.
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