Interesting comment by Ron Jeffries
(of XP fame) [link|http://blade.nagaokaut.ac.jp/cgi-bin/scat.rb/ruby/ruby-talk/31085|Small Methods]
He makes the point that in Smalltalk methods are short in part because of the development environments
"I think that part of the power of Smalltalk comes from the fact that the methods are all separate. A Smalltalk browser has a pane listing just the method names, typically alphabetically (or possibly grouped, alpha inside each group). When you click on a method in the list pane, that method appears. You can look at it, edit it, save it, look at another, and so on.
...
Editor-based languages like Ruby, Java, C++, encourage longer methods because we have to search with our eyes to figure things out."
There is no question in my mind that this is true. In an editor based language to jump from 1 method to another can be a pain and therefore it is easier to write longer methods.
