Robot name is ambiguous with regard to created vs booted

[joshgoebel]

From the description:

When a robot comes off the factory floor, it has no name. The first time you turn on a robot, a random name is generated

Yet most solutions / tests I've seen never make the "states"/timeline clear... what is the equivalent of "coming off the factory floor"? Most assume it's new Robot() or some such, ie the instantiation of the robot instances (in OOP languages), which makes sense. This might be a lot more literal if there was a RobotFactory though that created the robots instead of just a regular constructor (not that I'm arguing for that).

So, is the robot also ON at that time, or is that a step performed later? Many seem to think the robot isn't "on" until first queried for it's name and so therefore:

r = new Robot()
// r.name is null (but not always an easy way to query this)
r.name
// r.name has been assigned

I think this is ambiguous and unsatisfying though. One could obviously (via a direct access cable or some other method) query a robot name without powering on the robot, in case I would expect there to be no name - if it had not yet been turned on.

So I dislike the ambiguity regarding when a robot is "ON". I would suggest:

r = new Robot()
// r.name is null
r.name
// r.name is null
r.boot() // or r.turnOn(), etc
// r.name has been assigned

Ie:

• A newly constructed robot has no name
• Querying the name does not change the name
• A robot's name is generated "The first time you turn on a robot", as the instructions say literally.
• We make this on event explicit and part of the exercise

Thoughts?

[joshgoebel]

For example it seems clear to me that a test like this would make sense:

- create 700,000 new robots from the factory
- turn on 676,000 - they all have unique names
- turn on 1 more - error, no more names to be allocated

[ErikSchierboom]

So either we:

• Remove the "on" part of the robot
• Do what you suggested and make the on event explicit

This exercise also has no canonical data, so it might even be a good time to add them. As the values are random, we'd need some rather descriptive properties such as those used in the dnd-character exercise.