Implicit enum conversions are a stupid PITA

[Nick Sabalausky]

"Andrei Alexandrescu" <SeeWebsiteForEmail at erdani.org> wrote in message 
news:hodla0$2sta$1 at digitalmars.com...
> On 03/24/2010 12:57 PM, Nick Sabalausky wrote:
>> "Andrei Alexandrescu"<SeeWebsiteForEmail at erdani.org>  wrote in message
>> news:hod5o3$1nhg$1 at digitalmars.com...
>>>
>>>
>>> Who are "they"?
>>>
>> He was modifying the common expression "Those who don't learn from the 
>> past
>> are doomed to repeat it."
>
> But paraphrasing ain't "as they say" because they don't say that. Besides, 
> I thought he's paraphrasing "Any sufficiently complicated C or Fortran 
> program contains a buggy implementation of Common Lisp." But I guess 
> that's just me being cranky - I'm sick.
>

Ok, I'm not going to get baited into picking apart minute details of 
someone's exact choice of wording.


>>> Why does a mechanism that allows creating bitfields, custom enums, 
>>> flags,
>>> custom-base literals, and more, feel hackish,
>>
>> Because it involves passing everything as parameters to a
>> string-mixin-generating function/template. Powerful as such as thing is, 
>> and
>> as much as I like having that ability available, it is a rather blunt
>> instrument and does tend to feel very hackish.
>
> Feeling is subjective. To me it doesn't.
>

And so what, that proves it isn't hackish? Point is, there are people who do 
find it hackish, and saying "I don't" hardly addresses the issue.


>> Also, looking at the docs for bitmanip, it looks like "bitfields" creates 
>> a
>> "BitArray". But the interface for bitarray doesn't really seem to match 
>> the
>> conceptual-level operations performed on bitfields any more than just 
>> using
>> an ordinary uint would, and it doesn't seem to solve most of the problems
>> with doing so, either.
>
> Nonsense. bitfields does not create a BitArray and does exactly what you'd 
> expect some bit fields to do. To saliently criticize an artifact, it does 
> help to understand it.
>
> First, custom bitfields are taken care of appropriately by bitfield. You 
> may want to try it before replying. Second, this thread is about enums 
> that are bitwise flags, so I take it you replied to disagree with every 
> paragraph I wrote.
>

"it does help to understand it" <- Which is why I went and double-checked 
the docs. The docs didn't say anything about what "bitfields" actually 
created, but it did have a big definition of the "BitArray" type right 
there, and no other types were mentioned besides FloatRep and DoubleRep 
(which were clearly mere uses of "bitfields"), so I assumed. Clearly I 
assumed wrong, big fucking deal. That's no reason to get all pissy about it.


>>> while still failing to address major problems (concurrency, 
>>> immutability)
>>> feels not?
>>>
>>
>> I don't think anyone's suggesting that things like concurrency and
>> immutability should fail to be addressed.
>
> Then stop extolling the virtues of an obscure feature.
>

Wow, cranky indeed.