Should certain abstract classes be instantiable?

[Andrei Alexandrescu]

Jarrett Billingsley wrote:
> On Fri, Oct 2, 2009 at 11:00 AM, Andrei Alexandrescu
> <SeeWebsiteForEmail at erdani.org> wrote:
>> No. I think it would help going back to my original message instead of
>> asking one-liner questions. This would work much better in real life, but
>> it's a time sink in a newsgroup. You spend five seconds on asking a question
>> with a foregone answer just because you don't want to invest fifteen seconds
>> in re-reading my initial post, and then you have me spend five minutes
>> explain things again. It's counter-productive.
>>
>> If a class defines an abstract method and also provides a body for it, it
>> still requires the derived class to override the method. So abstract still
>> has some meaning.
> 
> Yes, I see now the parenthesized "requires overriding in derivees" now.
> 
>> On the other hand, technically such a class would become instantiable
>> because it defines all of its methods. I wanted to explain that, however,
>> that wouldn't be a good idea because... and here's where 1-2 good examples
>> would have helped. I guess I'm going to drop it.
> 
> Speaking of counterproductive timesinks, why would you bring up a
> proposal only to argue that it's a bad idea?

It was a question, you one-liner-asker you.

Andrei