Le 13/11/2012 20:13, Jonathan M Davis a écrit :
On Tuesday, November 13, 2012 09:45:17 H. S. Teoh wrote:
Unfortunately, using ranges in their most general sense
is looking like a pipe dream to me right now, and I'm ready to just move
on.
The reality of the matter is that there are limits to any abstraction. In
order to make it take more use cases and situations into account, it must
become increasingly complicated, and eventually the abstraction becomes
complicated enough that it's hard to use for even basic cases.
Let me disagree. As stated before, I never used moveXXX in my code. That
doesn't mean it is useless, but that you can definitively work with an
abstraction without messing around with all possible « extensions ».
I'd argue that this is the key to successful abstraction : a solid core,
a possibility for extension and knowledge of such extension being optional.
So, trying to
make an abstraction work for everything comes at a definite cost. Rather, it
should probably try and strike a good balance. It needs to be powerful enough
to handle the majority of cases but still be simple enough to use in the
average case. And ranges currently risk being too complicated to use in the
average case without screwing them up somehow.
