[bitc-dev] Objects in BitC

[Jonathan S. Shapiro]

On Fri, 2008-09-12 at 12:35 -0700, Raoul Duke wrote:
> hi,
> 
> > The issue that I have NOT addressed here is the issue of subtyping and
> > supporting syntax. That clearly needs to be addressed, and we will
> > address it in a future note.
> 
> Does that mean y'all have it worked out already? I am concerned, given
> how fraught-with-peril most OO implementations really are (fragile
> base classes, diamond problems, yadda cubed), that adding objects to
> BitC could start to add some unfortunate gotchyas. If you have plans
> to address those things, that would be great :-)

There isn't any deep theoretical issue. It's more that existential types
seem to cross the threshold of user-manageable complexity unless they
are very carefully constrained.

In a language with value types (i.e. explicit unboxing) there is also a
problem that the compiler cannot determine the size of a field having
existential type.


shap