Appropriate Usage of the "THIS" Scope
For the past several days, my good friend Jim and I have been having a series of discussions regarding the use of the 'THIS' scope within CFCs; specifically, CFCs that are to be used in an OO fashion. He's part of a small team that has just begun their OO journey and are embarking on a project where they hope to grow and refine their understanding in this arena. Jim being the stickler for correctness that he is, he often bounces approaches and ideas off of me to see what my take is, as well as compare the code he produces to that of his fellow teammates. Here is where a certain rift has manifested itself among them, as his fellow coders are producing CFCs that make heavy use of the 'THIS' scope and little to no use of 'Variables' and 'Var', while Jim is not using 'THIS' at all and is rather declaring his variables as public within the 'Variables' scope or private using 'Var'.
My personal take on the use of 'THIS' within a CFC (and what I firmly expressed to Jim) is that it would be a rare circumstance when I would see 'THIS' as the appropriate scope, since putting variables into 'THIS' exposes them to actions performed outside of the CFC. Just visualizing a CFC with all it's internal variables in the 'THIS' scope immediately causes me to think, "You've just reduced your object down to a very primitive state...a Transfer Object. Why don't you just rather create a structure to hold those values since you're ACCESSING them as if your object WERE a structure." Basically, I've been telling Jim that using 'THIS', except in very specific circumstances, is a bad thing to do.
His own intuition and experience up to this point tells him the same thing, since his comprehension of 'Variables' and 'Var' is quite clear. He has as of yet, however, been unable to convince his peers of this, and has even been admonished to STOP using 'Variables' and 'Var' and start putting his CFC variables in 'THIS'.
Because Jim is a stickler for learning to do things the "right" way, he set out on a Google journey to find documented proof that what he and I believe regarding 'THIS' is absolutely correct. His search has left him empty-handed, though, and so he and I turn to you, our fellow developers, for input on this topic.
The question then: What are your basic rules of thumb regarding the use of 'THIS' when writing a CFC to be used in an OO application (even a loosely structured one)?
Thanks in advance for sharing your opinion!
Doug :0)
My personal take on the use of 'THIS' within a CFC (and what I firmly expressed to Jim) is that it would be a rare circumstance when I would see 'THIS' as the appropriate scope, since putting variables into 'THIS' exposes them to actions performed outside of the CFC. Just visualizing a CFC with all it's internal variables in the 'THIS' scope immediately causes me to think, "You've just reduced your object down to a very primitive state...a Transfer Object. Why don't you just rather create a structure to hold those values since you're ACCESSING them as if your object WERE a structure." Basically, I've been telling Jim that using 'THIS', except in very specific circumstances, is a bad thing to do.
His own intuition and experience up to this point tells him the same thing, since his comprehension of 'Variables' and 'Var' is quite clear. He has as of yet, however, been unable to convince his peers of this, and has even been admonished to STOP using 'Variables' and 'Var' and start putting his CFC variables in 'THIS'.
Because Jim is a stickler for learning to do things the "right" way, he set out on a Google journey to find documented proof that what he and I believe regarding 'THIS' is absolutely correct. His search has left him empty-handed, though, and so he and I turn to you, our fellow developers, for input on this topic.
The question then: What are your basic rules of thumb regarding the use of 'THIS' when writing a CFC to be used in an OO application (even a loosely structured one)?
Thanks in advance for sharing your opinion!
Doug :0)
