Question

Currently i`m interesting in play framework because this framework promise faster development.

When i see the code, there are so many static code. even the controller declared as static function. Thus all the code that called inside static function must be static right?

My question is, is this approach is right? are there any side effect of using to many static function?

Answer 1

Couple of things about static methods in an object oriented language: Let me try to explain the problems if you choose to have all static methods.

Using all static functions may not be idiomatic in an Object oriented language.
You cannot override static functions in a subclass. Therefore you lose the ability to do runtime polymorphism by overriding.

The variables that you define all become class variables automatically (since all your methods are static), so essentially you do not have any state associated with the instance.

Static methods are difficult to Mock. You might need frameworks like PowerMock to do the mocking for you. So testing becomes difficult.

Design becomes a bit complex as you won’t be able to create immutable classes as you really only have the class and no instance. So designing thread-safe classes becomes difficult.