On Saturday, 27 May 2017 at 18:26:07 UTC, Moritz Maxeiner wrote:
mechanism, but you *cannot* use a smart pointer as a replacement for a class instance, because the latter is normal pointer, and the former adds features on top of a pointer; they cannot be the same as a matter of definition, i.e. you cannot replace classes with smart pointer structs on the language level, because it removes features from the language.
I am not sure what you mean here. As long as the "smart pointer" is in a subtype relationship with the current "class reference" then it can add features, yes?
You could do this as a compiler configuration even, switch out GC with ref-counting smart pointers.
The point of this thread was to have fewer language constructs, with more lowering, so that the resulting language would be a super-language, that fully covers the original language (or close to it).
