Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
Nick Sabalausky wrote:
"Steven Schveighoffer" <schvei...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:op.usjnzajzeav...@steves.networkengines.com...
On Fri, 17 Apr 2009 14:32:07 -0400, Nick Sabalausky <a...@a.a> wrote:
My main concern that I've read so far is how if a class has a dynamic
method dispatcher that's callable like a method, you can't rely on
the compiler to help you typecheck (or spellcheck) the *non-dynamic*
methods, because it will just default to sending incorrectly typed
data or misspelled methods to the dynamic dispatcher.
That is a *very* good point, that hadn't even occured to me.
I think dynamic methods have a very limited use, and probably aren't
worth polluting the D language for a few rare cases.
Agreed.
When you know the API ahead of time, you're almost always better off
to have statically typed objects. When you don't know it ahead of
time, well, I prefer the uglyness of seeing the quoted strings to
having the compiler just start trusting everything I do ;)
Agreed.
I think there's merit in binding via strings. It makes for very flexible
code that is future-proof, dynamic-linking-friendly, and hot-swappable
without recompiling (e.g. you don't need to recompile because you now
implement an interface etc.)
Does that still apply to the template version you proposed?
Reflection is very useful as well.
If anything, this agreed-fest shows that the rift between static typing
and dynamic typing is alive and well. I've seen many discussions in
which people were mystified how anyone gets anything done in a
statically-typed OO language. (In fairness, static typing and OO have at
best a tense marriage.)
But anyway, my point is that it's good to be open-minded. If this
conversation does nothing but leave us firmly with our heels in
static-land, then we haven't gained anything. If we weren't used to
static types we wouldn't be here. I think D can and should allow string
lookup for its methods. It's a low-complexity proposition that adds a
very interesting tool to D's arsenal. I suggested Walter since a long
time ago to support opDot!(string). He implemented the useless version
(sigh) which was arguably much simpler and offered a cheap way to
experiment. So I'm very happy it's back on the table, and with an
implementation to boot. Congratulations David.
Andrei
