[RFC] type safe trees

[Phil Edwards]

On Thu, Jun 24, 2004 at 12:41:56PM -0400, Andrew Pinski wrote:
> 
> 100% disagree here, if we are going to say we require a C++ compiler
> why not go all out why stop at using no templates, exceptions, etc. go
> all out and use them all and get worse performance as we have now.

You're speaking facetiously as a joke, but one of the disagreements that
keeps being raised (here and on IRC) is that if we start using any part
of C++, even if only a "stricter C with classes," we'll inevitably start
using more and more, ending up with a bizarre template metaprogramming
version of reload.

Can we all agree to just flat kill that stupid nonsense?  It's a causal
(not "casual") form of the slippy-slope argument, which is typically wrong.
It implies that nobody would /notice/ if other facets of the language
suddenly appeared in the compiler sources.  It implies that we can't use
any part of C++ without using all of it, which any decent C++ programmer
should find a little insulting, as the language was expressly designed to
support using only parts of it.

It /is/ possible to pick a subset and restrict ourselves to it.  If somebody
is scared that a developer will violate that subset, then that somebody
can participate more in patch review.  :-)  Or at the least, help design
-Wself-bootstrap.


> But seriously, we have no need for C++ at this momement in time for GCC,
> static only trees are nice but you can still cheat and get around them but
> runtime trees you have no way to cheat and get around them.  If something
> does not exist it turns into an ICE and you will see the problem right away.

Which is a horrible, horrible way of catching errors, compared to a
compiler diagnostic.


-- 
I would therefore like to posit that computing's central challenge, viz. "How
not to make a mess of it," has /not/ been met.
                                                 - Edsger Dijkstra, 1930-2002