On Monday, 25 August 2014 at 01:10:32 UTC, Aerolite wrote:
-- No syntax modification (unless you want the feature to be optional)
If this ever gets into the core language, it absolutely must be optional! Think of the implications of having this as the default and only behavior:
* Every overloaded function will have to do a runtime typecheck - this not only causes a usually unnecessary overhead but also has a negative impact on branch prediction.
* No way to reuse the overload that accepts an object of the parent class inside the implementation of the overload that accepts an object of the child class.
* What if you have multiple overloads that happen to be templated? Now the compiler will have to instantiate them all!
Anyways, I don't think you get just how strong this language's tendency to push features to the library is, so I'd like to point you to this post by the language's creator:
http://forum.dlang.org/thread/lt00a9$2uoe$1...@digitalmars.com#post-lt00a9:242uoe:241:40digitalmars.com
