[Typo3-dev] OT: Hooks, was: Pledge fo 3.8.1

[Michael Scharkow]

Dimitri Tarassenko wrote:
> Am I the only one thinking that "hooks" are a sign of bad decoupling
> in software? The more I look at how and where the hooks are used, the
> more I think that whenever a hook is required and implemented what
> really needs to be done is the method containing the hook needs to be
> split in several and one of these submethods should be iplemented in a
> subclass.

Can you elaborate on this? I don't see how putting a method in a 
subclass (btw. we're subclassing exactly what?) works for hooks. Hooks 
are only only "announcing" that there is some data available for 
processing, but they know nothing about who "answers". The difficulty 
for the core code would then be to know when to use subclass Y instead 
of Z, right?

> These "hooks" are going to be nightmare to manage and debug once their
> number (and number of extensions that may use them) grow.

I'm not sure how much effort it really is to maintain some two-line hook 
which is embedded in some method. And while there might me scalability 
issues with the number of hooks in the code, the number of extensions 
using them should not matter to the author of the hook code itself 
(given API stability).

Anyway, I'd be interested in a better concept that is flexible but not 
quite as hackish as XClassing...

Greetings,
Michael