Eliminate "new" for class object creation?

[Robert Jacques]

On Mon, 19 Oct 2009 18:45:01 -0400, dsimcha <dsimcha at yahoo.com> wrote:

> == Quote from Andrei Alexandrescu (SeeWebsiteForEmail at erdani.org)'s  
> article
>> I'm having a hard time justifying that you use
>> new X(args)
>> to create a class object, and
>> X(args)
>> to create a struct object. I wrote this:
>> ============
>> The syntactic  difference between  the expression creating  a @struct@
>> object---Test(@\meta{args}@)@---and the  expression creating a @class@
>> object---\cc{new Test(}\meta{args}@)@---may be  jarring at first. \dee
>> could have dropped the @new@  keyword entirely, but that @new@ reminds
>> the programmer that an object allocation (i.e., nontrivial work) takes
>> place.
>> ===============
>> I'm unhappy about that explanation because the distinction is indeed
>> very weak. The constructor of a struct could also do unbounded amounts
>> of work, so what gives?
>> I hereby suggest we get rid of new for class object creation. What do
>> you guys think?
>> Andrei
>
> Absolutely.  I've thought this for a while but hesitated to bring it up  
> because I
> felt it was a bikeshed issue.  Now that I think of it, though, it would  
> have the
> substantive benefit of making it easier to switch from structs to  
> classes if you
> suddenly realize you need polymorphism, or from classes to structs if  
> you suddenly
> realize you need value semantics.  I really can't see any downside other  
> than the
> loss of static opCall for classes, which doesn't have tons of good use  
> cases anyhow.

As structs mix static opCall and ctors, there's no reason classes can't.