Should I use virtual 'Initialize()' functions to initialize an object of my class?

Question

I\'m currently having a discussion with my teacher about class design and we came to the point of Initialize() functions, which he heavily promotes. Example:

Answer 1

Others have argued at length against the use of Initialize, I myself see one use: laziness.

For example:

File file("/tmp/xxx");
foo(file);

Now, if foo never uses file (after all), then it's completely unnecessary to try and read it (and would indeed be a waste of resources).

In this situation, I support Lazy Initialization, however it should not rely on the client calling the function, but rather each member function should check if it is necessary to initialize or not. In this example name() does not require it, but encoding() does.