Study the possibility of using Vogen to fix Primitive Obsession with Segment/Offset, paths, and other values

[maximilien-noal]

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.

Sometimes, we use Segment instead of Offset or vice-versa, because both are ushort values.

Sometimes, we pass the DosFileManager a dosPath instead of a hostPath or vice-versa, because both are string values.

Describe the solution you'd like

Make the compiler raise an error before runtime. With this package:

https://github.com/SteveDunn/Vogen

Describe alternatives you've considered

Use classes instead, I guess.... But Vogen can generate the boring boiler plate code.

Additional context

None.

[JorisVanEijden]

I have nothing against Vogen, but I don't think it solves the examples you mentioned?
The classes have no way of knowing if 0x1234 represents a segment or an offset.
Same with the paths, "/home" can be either a host or a dos path.

Good variable, parameter and method names should be able to take care of these problems.

[maximilien-noal]

Yes, maybe I misinterpreted what Vogen is capable of.

[SteveDunn]

No idea what this is, but Vogen helps distinguish between ambiguous primitives and real world types. If a method parameter is of type 'Segment', then the compiler will tell you if you pass an 'Offset'.

It may be that your API accepts either, in that case, you can use Either<Segment, Offset>

Happy to elaborate further, but it sounds like Vogen is exactly the the kind of thing to differentiate between ambiguous primitives and domain concepts

[JorisVanEijden]

Thanks Steve. Both segment and offset are 16 bit unsigned integers in the range 0x0000 to 0xFFFF The problem is that they are stored in our source systems as 2 16-bit words in 2 different ways. Offset:segment and segment:offset Sometimes it's not obvious which one is which and we end up using the offset word as the segment and the segment word as the offset. There's no way for Vogen to know which is which.

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On Wed, Jul 19, 2023, 20:37 Steve Dunn ***@***.***> wrote: No idea what this is, but Vogen helps distinguish between ambiguous primitives and real world types. If a method parameter is of type 'Segment', then the compiler will tell you if you pass an 'Offset'. It may be that your API accepts either, in that case, you can use Either<Segment, Offset> Happy to elaborate further, but it sounds like Vogen is exactly the the kind of thing to differentiate between ambiguous primitives and domain concepts — Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <#372 (comment)>, or unsubscribe <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/ABHYKTXU6ID3RKSZ32X45Y3XRASP5ANCNFSM6AAAAAA2CDFCXM> . You are receiving this because you commented.Message ID: ***@***.***>

[maximilien-noal]

Vogen can still be used to strongly enforce usage, like hostPath and dosPath strings usage in ourinternal APIs.