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Classes vs. Functions
I run into new developers who, after learning about classes, want to use them everywhere. They assume that because they learned about functions first, functions are somehow inferior.
Nope. They're just different.
Should I Use Functions or Classes?
Here's my rule of thumb:
If you're unsure, default to functions. I find myself reaching for classes when I need something long-lived and stateful that would be easier to model if I could share behavior and data structure via inheritance. This is often the case for:
- Video games
- Simulations
- GUIs
The difference is:
Classes encourage you to think about the world as a hierarchical collection of objects. Objects bundle behavior, data, and state together in a way that draws boundaries between instances of things, like chess pieces on a board.
Functions encourage you to think about the world as a series of data transformations. Functions take data as input and return a transformed output. For example, a function might take the entire state of a chess board and a move as inputs, and return the new state of the board as output.
Use what feels right to you in your projects, and adjust and refactor as you improve your skills.