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Comment by EliAndrewC | Hacker News Reader

On a similar note, the code parse an XML document in Java:

    Document doc = DocumentBuilderFactory.newInstance().newDocumentBuilder().parse("test.xml");

That's not even a framework; it's just what's in the standard library for parsing XML.

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You can lay for that in the gang of four book which recommended things like "abstract factory" - the odd thing was, I thought most of those authors were ex smalltalkers?

I bet they were looking for extensibility.

I wonder if they ever thought of providing two interfaces.

1. The first is the common case.

    Document doc = new DocumentBuilder().parse("test.xml");

2. The second is more cumbersome but provides options.

    Document doc = DocumentBuilderFactory.newInstance(opts).newDocumentBuilder(opts2).parse("test.xml");

This is the facade pattern :) If you need it, this means you are overengineering. Applying it is even more overengineering.

I think the common case could be even simpler

    Document doc = DocumentBuilder.parse("test.xml");

no need to manually create an instance of the builder.

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