On 3/20/12 12:50 AM, Kapps wrote:
On Monday, 19 March 2012 at 21:00:32 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
On 3/19/12 3:55 PM, F i L wrote:
I think this could get tricky for the compiler to confidently use given
that the mixed in enums can collide with existing members (although not
likely). Also, if objects are not identified as being unique marked (in
the compilers eyes), what specific attribute post-fixes will it be
searching for on enums members?
Not a big issue, the name could always contain a uuid which makes
collision practically impossibile.
Andrei
And with parameters? Or how about run-time reflection, which is
something that should be added eventually for attributes as well (that
is, typeid(Blah).getCustomAttributes())? We can't manually add things
into the TypeInfo.
Perhaps we should add a field of type Variant[string].
This is an already ridiculously hackish approach, and
it *does not* work for anything besides trivial applications. It is
completly unreasonable to expect everything to be done in a library; the
compiler exists for a reason and at some point you have to draw the
line.
I'm afraid I disagree. A targeted language feature definitely makes a
library approach inferior, by definition. But adding features is
cheating, like printing money is for a government: very tempting, with
apparently good short-term benefits, but with devastating cumulative
effects.
Also, as I mentioned, the availability of the easy escape hatch of
adding a language feature thwarts creativity. Nobody will care to think
about and come with idioms that use the language to do great things, if
they know a language feature could be always added that makes things
"nicer".
I'm not saying this particular feature should or should not be in the
language, but I wish our community exercised considerably more restraint
when it comes about adding new language features.
Why even bother having an auto keyword? Instead of 'auto a = b +
c' you could simply use 'Auto!(b + c) a = b + c'. It is a more extreme
example for now, but won't be too much different once more complicated
things arise; after all, auto!2 a = 2 is not much different from auto a
= 2. Just like it's not too much different for parameterless attributes
(even if it is uglier and much more hackish), but once you get into
parameters and runtime stuff it becomes just as ugly as the above example.
I don't think your example with auto is relevant.
Andrei
