> On Dec 29, 2017, at 11:21 PM, Kenny Leung via swift-evolution
> <swift-evolution@swift.org> wrote:
>
> Hi All.
>
> I just discovered that you can’t write an extension on AnyObject. What’s the
> reasoning behind this?
>
> I’m trying to write my own version of KeyValueObserving, and it would be
> really nice to be able to write
>
> self.observe(someObject, keyPath) {
> blah de blah
> }
>
> from anywhere.
The rationale is that AnyObject is a somewhat "structural" protocol, one that's
really just "this is a class type", which means that extensions on it would
become a way to add methods to a largely-unresticted set of types. We've been
reluctant to allow that for the same reason that we've been reluctant to allow
extensions on Any. One such reason that's particularly significant to me is
that it feels like that would be an ability that would be quickly abused, so
that the namespace of methods on Any/AnyObject would quickly become very
crowded, downgrading the experience of code-completion, compiler diagnostics,
and so on.
John.
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