Robert Jacques wrote:
> On Mon, 19 Oct 2009 18:45:01 -0400, dsimcha <dsim...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>> == Quote from Andrei Alexandrescu (seewebsiteforem...@erdani.org)'s
>> article
>>> I'm having a hard time justifying that you use
>>> new X(args)
>>> to create a class object, and
>>> X(args)
>>> to create a struct object. I wrote this:
>>> ============
>>> The syntactic difference between the expression creating a @struct@
>>> object---Test(@\meta{args}@)@---and the expression creating a @class@
>>> object---\cc{new Test(}\meta{args}@)@---may be jarring at first. \dee
>>> could have dropped the @new@ keyword entirely, but that @new@ reminds
>>> the programmer that an object allocation (i.e., nontrivial work) takes
>>> place.
>>> ===============
>>> I'm unhappy about that explanation because the distinction is indeed
>>> very weak. The constructor of a struct could also do unbounded amounts
>>> of work, so what gives?
>>> I hereby suggest we get rid of new for class object creation. What do
>>> you guys think?
>>> Andrei
>>
>> Absolutely. I've thought this for a while but hesitated to bring it
>> up because I
>> felt it was a bikeshed issue. Now that I think of it, though, it
>> would have the
>> substantive benefit of making it easier to switch from structs to
>> classes if you
>> suddenly realize you need polymorphism, or from classes to structs if
>> you suddenly
>> realize you need value semantics. I really can't see any downside
>> other than the
>> loss of static opCall for classes, which doesn't have tons of good use
>> cases anyhow.
>
> As structs mix static opCall and ctors, there's no reason classes can't.
Why do we still have static opcall? What role does it play that ctors don't?
