On 3/17/2012 10:01 PM, F i L wrote:
Walter Bright wrote:
My impression is it is just obfuscation around a simple lazy initialization
pattern.
While I can see the abstraction usefulness of compile time attribute metadata,
I am having a hard time seeing what the gain is with runtime attributes over
more traditional techniques.
I'm not sure exactly what you mean by runtime attributes. Do you mean the
ability to reflect upon attributes at runtime?
I mean there is modifiable-at-runtime, instance-specific data.
In that case, there's two
benefits I can think of over "traditional" member data: Instance memory
(attributes are create at reflection),
Lazy initialization is a standard pattern. No special language features are
needed for it.
and reusable metadata packages (similar
to how you might use mixin templates only with less noise and reflection
capabilities).
Sounds like a garden variety user-defined data type.
Again, I am just not seeing the leap in power with this. It's a mystery to me
how a user defined "attribute class" is different in any way from a user defined
class, and what advantage special syntax gives a standard pattern for lazy
initialization, and why extra attribute fields can't be just, well, fields.
