On Tuesday, 6 October 2015 at 20:04:06 UTC, jmh530 wrote:
On Tuesday, 6 October 2015 at 18:43:42 UTC, Jonathan M Davis
wrote:
In most cases though, just don't use classes. In most cases,
inheritance is a horrible way to write programs anyway,
because it's _horrible_ for code reuse. It definitely has its
uses, but I've found that I rarely need classes in D. I
suspect that far too many folks new to D end up using classes
instead of structs just because they're used to using classes
in C++ or Java or whatever.
What improvements to structs do you think would help people
coming from C++/Java most?
I don't think the problem is with structs. The problem is that
programmers coming from other languages default to using classes.
The default in D should always be a struct. You use a class
because you actually need inheritance or because you want to
ensure that a type is always a reference type and don't want to
go to the trouble of writing a struct that way (and even then,
you should probably just write the struct that way). You
shouldn't use a class as your default for user-defined types in
D. But because other languages don't have structs quite like D
does, and you use classes in those other languages, that's what
most everyone wants to use - at least initially.
It would not surprise me if there are some compiler bugs with
regards to structs that result in some loopholes that shouldn't
be there (e.g. with @disable-ing stuff), but on the whole, I
think that D structs are very well designed as they are. The only
real issue IMHO is having an init value vs having a default
constructor, and that's a tradeoff with pros and cons on both
sides. It does sometimes seem painful to folks coming from C++,
but on the whole, I think that we're better off for it.
- Jonathan M Davis
