Dear org.lcsim developers,
I would like to share some comments about the API from a user point-of-view. I hope that the comments will become more detailed, once I actually use it:
Status codes
The Java language was awarded such a nice enum class. Is there really a performance issue in using ints for status bits or types ?
...
It is very confusing to have members like add(Object o1, Object o2) as members of the classes. This is counter-intuitive. Either there ought to be a supporter class with static members only, or the member of the type class expects only one argument.
So:
vec1.add(vec1, vec2) #BAD
vec1.add(vec2) #GOOD
import static x.y.add; add(vec1, vec2); #GOOD
Extending classes
public class RadLengths extends Hashtable #BAD !!!
The radiation lengths are not a new kind of HashTable. They should be implemented USING a HashTable !
Using strings to access parameters
While I admit there are situations where it is hard to avoid using strings to pass information between functions (e.g. event.put/event.get), most of the time this is a horrible idea. Look at the RadLengths class as an example. There is nothing dynamic about this class, all radiation lengths are constant and therefore determined at compile time. Besides imposing an unnecessary overhead of string comparison, the compiler cannot check if the string is spelled correctly. I really fail to comprehend why we don't use symbolic constants for these kinds of things. Be it in terms of static ints or enums, but at least something that can be checked at compile time rather than runtime. Again, that way we can even take advantage of code-completion.
Thank you for your consideration
Jan