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

[John Reimer]

Sean Kelly wrote:
> 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


Yes, that summarizes the problem quite nicely.  The content was never 
really the aim of this whole affair, as we vainly tried to point out. :P

-JJR