This was running through my head as well, and means that your software design is...

weavejester · on July 16, 2012

You can, but the better your standard library, the less you need specialized functions. For instance, instead of something like:

    response.setHeader("X-Foo", "Bar");

In a functional language we'd change the data structure directly:

    (assoc-in response [:headers "X-Foo"] "Bar")

If, for instance, 90% of your application can be factored out into static methods, OOP starts to look like the wrong paradigm.

wonderzombie · on July 16, 2012

A lot of static methods on a Util object strikes me as a smell in the context of this discussion. In OO-land it's not a smell per se because often you have no alternative. But functionally your class is a glorified namespace.

weavejester · on July 16, 2012

What do you mean? I don't believe anyone is suggesting that if you have many static methods or functions, they should all be put in one namespace.

Ralith · on July 16, 2012

I think that's exactly what dclowd9901 was suggesting, though he may not have fully considered it.

dclowd9901 · on July 19, 2012

Not necessarily. Of course defining classes is tricky, and there's no such thing as a rule of thumb, and that's more what I was trying to relay with my comment. And I agree with others who are saying that a piece of software where objects are crammed with tons of static classes is bad OOP.