Thread: Making a human class...not sure what to do

Originally Posted by maxorator

Why have a gender as functions setGender() and getGender()? Can't you just have a public gender variable?

Sure you can. But the moment you want to store the gender in some different way, or log a message whenever the gender is changed (because laws against cross-gender operations have been passed, for example) or want to enforce some restrictions, you're pretty much screwed with a variable. Getters/setters are future-oriented programming, and thanks to inlining, they're usually free in terms of runtime performance.

Also gender is a good thing to be hold in a BOOL data type.

No, it's not. First, nothing is a good thing to hold in a BOOL data type, because that's a Win32 "C has no bool" type. If anything, use a proper C++ bool.
It's also conceptually wrong. is_male could be boolean, or is_female. gender cannot be boolean - what does true mean? Make's me think of Austin Powers.

Form: Sex?
Austin: Yes, please!

An enum is by far the best choice for gender. It's an enumeration of a finite and small set of possible values, namely "male" and "female".

Originally Posted by CornedBee

It's also conceptually wrong. is_male could be boolean, or is_female. gender cannot be boolean - what does true mean? Make's me think of Austin Powers.


An enum is by far the best choice for gender. It's an enumeration of a finite and small set of possible values, namely "male" and "female".

A bool would be plain stupid in that case. enum is the best way to go.