Terminology - users of a class

Question

I'm writing some documentation and I just can't find the right word. Let say my class is called Writer and some people will be using it. How should I name objects that use the class (or instances of) I'm documenting?

• Users of Writer class? - Program is not "a user".
• Consumers of Writer class? - Sounds like somebody will eat it.
• Callers or Writer class? - Sounds good for methods only.

There must be a correct word for this and I should feel stupid for asking but please, help.

Edit: just to clarify, I'm thinking about the code (not programmer) that is calling and using the class or instance of it (well, maybe I'm thing in code to much...)

Answer 1

How about "Client"?

Answer 2

First of all, know that there are no stupid questions, just stupid answers.

An End-User (the developer in this case) would be the user of the class.
Consuming is a verb related to aquiring resources.
Indeed calling is for functions.

Answer 3

Well, in the classic book Thinking in Java 2nd edition, there are two ways of using a class: by composition or by inheritance.(yes, this bit is also important)

I don't remember the exact words, but the summary would be sort of like this:

composition - you create a new object from which the target class instance would be referred.

inheritance - you create a new class that inherits (extends) the target class, provided that class is able to be inherited from.

For the exact terminology, I would say it really doesn't matter that much.

But if you want just describe the case where a new instance of such a class is created, you could say some actor (user) instantiates a new object of this class.

Hope this helps.

Edited : the terminology really depends if you think it is the user or the user's code that makes use of the target class.

Answer 4

I will prefer user anyway, even it is not a end-user. When you write documentation for your code the target audience is a programmer that will use your code. That programmer and their programs are users of your code.