Why Java Doesn't Need Operator Overloading (and Very Few Languages Do, Really)

[Walter Bright]

Don wrote:
> The number of operators that you can overload is very small and each of 
> them is attached to very specific semantics that makes little sense 
> outside the realm of scalars and of a few other specialized mathematical 
> concepts (e.g. matrices).

Exactly right.

> Bingo! That's what operator overloading is for. **Don't overload 
> arithmetic operators unless you are doing arithmetic.** I think the main 
> problem with operator overloading in C++ is that that point wasn't 
> explained well at all.

Even worse, by standardizing the << and >> for streams, C++ implicitly 
endorsed non-arithmetic usages.

> The D spec could probably do a better job of it, 
> but at least the ~ operator removes the temptation for people to use + 
> to mean concatenation.

Yeah, does + mean vector addition or concatenation? There's no solution 
to that problem if you don't have ~.