Objective-D, reflective programming, dynamic typing

[Christopher Wright]

Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
>>> No safety can be built into a function that traffics in void*, EVER. 
>>> No matter what you do. A proverb goes "No matter how nicely you dress 
>>> a mule, you'll still call it a mule." (It was s/mule/ass/g in 
>>> Romanian, but ass is ambiguous in English.) So yes, it would be a 
>>> waste of time to embellish a fundamentally deeply unsafe feature. A 
>>> better use of time would be to improve its safe counterpart.
>>
>> The void* is paired with a TypeInfo. A Variant uses raw data and 
>> TypeInfo, and manages to be reasonably safe. If you want guaranteed 
>> safety, you must use something like Java (or SafeD vaporware).
> 
> I don't want guaranteed safety. I want safety when lack thereof is 
> gratuitous.

But your variadic template prohibits polymorphism. Therefore, the lack 
of safety with variadic arguments is not gratuitous, merely unnecessary 
in certain situations.

It would, however, be quite nice to get a void*[] rather than a void*, 
since it would provide more safety (array bounds) and ease of use (you 
can index it or foreach it), while eliminating a standard library module.