Iterativenew

Iterativenew is a theoretical construction pattern in software engineering describing the staged assembly of an object by iterative refinements rather than a single trip through a constructor. The pattern emphasizes incremental progress toward a final state, allowing intermediate observations and partial progress between steps.

The term combines iterative and new to highlight the staged creation process. It is not a formalized standard in mainstream programming languages, but it appears in discussions of language design, design patterns, and academic literature as a conceptual approach for complex object creation.

Mechanism: begin with an initial minimal state; apply a sequence of update steps either functionally or procedurally; after each step, the intermediate state may be inspected; a termination predicate or a fixed step count ends the process. The final object is obtained after the last step. The approach supports error handling by aborting the sequence when a step fails and possibly preserving partial progress for debugging or retry.

Variants include synchronous iterativenew, which completes within a single thread; asynchronous iterativenew, which interleaves steps with other work; and lazy iterativenew, which defers expensive steps until final demand. These variants reflect different execution models and performance considerations.

Advantages of iterativenew include improved readability for complex initialization, easier testing of intermediate states, and potential for partial reuse of progress. Limitations include added complexity, potential performance overhead, and suitability mainly for objects whose construction spans multiple stages or where early validation is valuable.

Applications commonly cited involve building configuration objects with staged validation, incremental deserialization, and the incremental construction of data structures where each stage contributes verifiable progress. See also: Builder pattern, Incremental initialization, Factory method, Progressive refinement.