***** D method override mechanisms borked ******

[Sean Kelly]

Bruno Medeiros wrote:
> 
> Yes, I am so far just a student, and do not have much experience as many 
> here in the NG or in the general Computer-Science/Software-Development 
> population.
> And yes, I often do write bluntly and in a somewhat "beacon of wisdom" 
> tone.
> 
> But that does not mean you can immediately dismiss my comments as 
> incorrect or wrong just because I am a student or write in a certain 
> tone! That is a fallacy! What about actually examining what the person 
> is saying? And then *debating* and debunking?

A constructive discussion requires the participants to entertain one 
another's ideas in an attempt to work towards some sort of consensus.  A 
debate, on the other hand, tends to involve dissenting opinions with 
little attempt at conciliation.  I think what Kris meant was that your 
delivery tends to be framed in a manner that is more suitable for a 
debate than for a constructive discussion.  And as the purpose of this 
thread is to clarify confusion about intended behavior, I suspect that 
he has little interest in debating whether that behavior is or is not 
correct in some abstract sense.  Rather, I believe, Kris is seeking a 
consensus about intended behavior, based on experience and on the 
language spec, and is attempting to determine whether this intent has 
changed.  Obviously, Walter is the only one who can settle this issue. 
And I suspect that this may become a debate later if it turns out that 
the intent has changed without discussion :-)

> I explained and presented an argument (which could indeed be wrong) in 
> my comments, but never once (until recently) did you actually comment on 
> my reasoning.
> 
> Here's the funny thing. When I wrote the original post, I did have an 
> example of a language that did that. It was Java, who allows covariant 
> protection overriding. (C#, which I checked later than the original 
> post, works with invariant protection overriding).
> But I purposefully choose not to mention that, as I wanted to see how 
> people (and you in particular) would react to the argument itself. And 
> this is what happened...
> [I generally don't like to argue things with counter-examples/analogies 
> (like "it's the way it's done in X") because it usually means people 
> failed to understand/agree with the "constructive" argument.]
>
> So I hope the Java example is now enough to show that #1 is not a broken 
> behavior, and I regret that my "student" argument was not enough by 
> itself to show it. (or do you still think #1 is broken?) . It might not 
> be the only, or the best behavior, true, but it is not broken.

See above.  Your arguments may well have a place later if the merits of 
this design become an issue, but for now I think it may just confuse the 
matter.  And please note that I am not suggesting your ideas are or are 
not completely well-founded.  As you say, other languages such as Java 
and C++ behave the way D appears to work now.  But this is notably 
different from how D has historically been documented and shown to behave.


Sean