Cytoscape WikiGaryBader -9/30/05 - why do the setters take basic types e.g. double and the getters return Object types e.g. Double? Would it be simpler for the user to expect one or the other consistently?
EthanCerami -9/30/05 - Originally, I had the getters/setters use the same primitive types, e.g. boolean, double, String, etc. But, this becomes a problem for the getters. For example, if you request a boolean, but there is no value for this id/attributeName pair, what do you return? false? Hence, I switched to using wrappers. That way, if there is no id/attributeName pair, you get back a null. I then decided to keep the setters with primitive types, primarily for programmer convenience.
IlianaAvila -9/30/05 - I think that the setters should take wrapper classes instead of primitives, for consistency. It is not that hard to type "new Double(d)" for programmers 
NeriusLandys -9/30/05 - Originally I wanted to have a method for each type of attribute (String, Double, etc.). But this adds a lot of methods. What is worse is that for multidimensional data the number of permutations for data types grows very quickly, so for multidimentional data we are basically forced to use Object.
EthanCerami - 10/1/05 - OK, Gary and Iliana are probably right on this one. Let's modify all getters and setters to take wrapper objects.