On Wed, 2005-03-30 at 15:27 -0500, Aaron Sherman wrote: > Like I said, if you allow run-time munging of the type interfaces, then > you can't tell if this is valid or invalid: > > my X $a; > $a.m(1); > > you have to allow it always, regardless of the definition of X. In fact, > you can NEVER reject ANY method or function invocation based on > signature, since it might change at run-time. > > Is that really what you want?
I want the possibility to correct bad decisions of interfaces and signatures whenever possible in the most minimally intrusive way possible. I don't want to work around a module or class or function or method where someone tried to be helpful by saying "Oh, this will absolutely never change, ever" and the compiler helpfully froze that decision forever. Sometimes that means changing it outside the incorrect code. I don't trust any compiler to make every decision correctly, and in cases of ambiguity I believe that I can give it better hints than it can reason for itself if I need the extra speed or safely. A compiler that assumes incorrectly and disallows programmers to do useful things because its holds those assumptions as precious is wrong -- especially in cases where even the programmer can't tell if code is valid or invalid until the program actually runs. -- c
