although I\'m programming in C++ for some time now, I\'m always faced with desig

Question

although I'm programming in C++ for some time now, I'm always faced with design decisions (probably due to the language's flexibility). One such problem is deciding if a method should be part of the class or not.

As an example, oftentimes, I have a Simulation class similar to the following,

class Simulation{
public:
    Simulation(void);
    bool init(const char* init_file){
        //...
        particles_ = read_particles(init_file);
        //etc
    }
    //or even,
    bool init(int argc, char* argv[]);
    void run(void);
private:
    std::vector particles_;
    //Other private members
};

Here, I'm not sure if this init method, which parses a file and initializes the simulation should really be a class method. A different way to implement similar functionality, would be to have an external function or class which handles the parsing of either the command line arguments or the initialization file, and calls appropriate methods of the Simulation class.

bool init_simulation(Simulation& sim, const char* init_file){
    //...
    Particles particles = read_particles(init_file);
    sim.set_particles(particles);
    //etc
}

On the one hand it's easier to implement the functionality as a class method and it avoids having to introduce new classes/structs, specifically for passing parameters. On the other hand, externally handling the initialization, means that one can more easily extend it, although any changes on the Simulation class will propagate to the function.

What is the preferred design in situations similar to the one described above, and how should I approach similar design decisions?

Explanation / Answer

Your problem isn

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