A thought on VAJ and DJB

In IBM’s Visual Age for Java (affectionately called “VAJ”) you work with one method at a time and this has seemed to be a problem to me. We’re not currently using VAJ, but there’s been a lot of talk about switching here (not at Oops, but at the company I’m hired to).

I felt that only seeing one method at a time would hinder me, that it is essential for me to see the nearby methods of the class I’m editing. But I’m starting to think differently.

The other week Malte and I talked about the swinish nature of open-source code (in general) and Malte mentioned the software of D.J. Bernstein, which prefers to keep one C function per file, and we discussed the role this plays in keeping the design simple. I think this fact helps enforcing a simple design, because it gets pretty obvious when a function is too long.

So perhaps the one-method-at-a-time interface of VAJ benefits the simplicity of the design?