Lovely Demeter, Meter Maid
Wes and Parker pointed us to this article:
Misunderstanding the Law of Demeter by Dan Manges
which is a very nice discussion of the "law" (actually just a suggestion, but a very strong one) that encourages your objects, like small children, not to talk to strangers. Some people seem uneasy with the LoD since it requires them to refactor their objects to have proxy methods all over them. Instead of Paperboy calling customer.wallet.cash you have to put an extra method on Customer -- either cash (attribute delegation -- check out Forwardable in Rails btw) or pay (behavior delegation). But these proxy methods are not clutter, they're the essence of encapsulation. Do not fear encapsulation. Fear is the mind killer.
Anyway, Dan does a great job explaining this concept, until the very end of the article, when he totally chickens out.
