Re: They ALL suck! [Was: On Java and C++]
"Timo Stamm" <timo.stamm@arcor.de> wrote in message
news:44593125$0$4504$9b4e6d93@newsread2.arcor-online.net...
Oliver Wong schrieb:
does that mean that the designers of Java should have used the string
"i" instead of "implements" as the keyword? It depends on whether one
values clarity or terseness.
No. But maybe it could have looked like this:
class Foo : List
"public" is made default, ":" replaces "implements" (extends could be
replaced by "<").
Not sure "<" is the best choice, as it might be mistaken for a generic
type argument, but otherwise the idea is sound.
A better example for superfluous verbosity:
ArrayList<Entry<String, Integer, Object>> l = new
ArrayList<Entry<String, Integer, Object>>();
Wouldn't it be nice to have local type inference here?
def l = new ArrayList<Entry<String, Integer, Object>>();
I had forgotten about this feature in C++, and I can see the utility of
it. These two syntactic-sugar changes sound harmless enough that I think you
could (relatively) easily write a compiler that compiles from this new
language back to "plain" Java, and from there run the standard java compiler
to get the class files (or gcj for executables or whatever).
Getters and Setters are another good example. Sure, the IDE can generate
them. But C#s properties are a lot more elegant. You can start with simple
public members and introduce getters and setters later without any need to
change the clients of the class.
The language could forbid public fields altogether, and have
<code>
public int foo;
</code>
be syntactic sugar for
<code>
private int foo;
public int foo {
get { return foo; }
set { foo = value; }
}
</code>
assuming the language had some sort of mechanism for disabiguating between
the public property and the private field.
- Oliver