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I don't have a good name for it, but I used the same pattern 20ish years ago for game engine stuff.

Java folks might have a name. It's similar to the Foo().bar().baz() constructor pattern.

I think you're thinking of the Builder pattern. That's a bit different, because you return the same type and same object on every chained call.

No, I think it is the same thing. Typically¹ with a Builder there's one final method that builds and returns the final object (which has a different type).

¹ Edit to add: well, it's a pattern I've seen a lot, anyway. I think it's preferable to mutating the final object in place because it "makes illegal states unrepresentable" as others in this discussion have mentioned.

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