[937] in java-interest
Re: overloading of operators
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Sean Elliott Russell)
Tue Aug 15 18:56:29 1995
To: java-interest@java.sun.com
Date: Tue, 15 Aug 1995 12:05:33 -0700
From: Sean Elliott Russell <ser@cs.uoregon.edu>
Everybody seems to be coming down on operator overloading, so I'll stick up
for the new guy.
Operator overloading is a convention borrowed from centuries of
mathematicians, and I see nothing wrong with it. The symbols we use to
represent common functions are simply that: symbols which represent an idea.
As such, they should be allowed to operate on non-standard objects. The
classic case is a class implementation of complex numbers. Why shouldn't I be
able to add two complex numbers by using the '+' glyph? It's clean, logical,
standard in the world of mathematics... and illegal in Java.
Certainly, anything can be abused, and operator overloading lends itself to
abuse quite readily. However, programmers can be measured by their code, and
good programmers should not be afraid of tools which test their skill. One of
the reasons why many of us prefere more complicated operating systems such as
Unix to simple ones such as Mac System 7 is because System 7 is insulting. It
is an operating system which assumes you are stupid, or computer illiterate.
I see fear of operator overloading in the same light. We are not programming
in Pascal. Many of us do not require that the compiler assume we are
incompetent programmers.
I, for one, would like the feature of operator overloading. Its a powerful,
elegant, and object-oriented feature which is sorely missed.
--- SER
Sean Russell \ If trees screamed, would we be so cavalier
ser@cs.uoregon.edu \ about cutting them down? Maybe, if they
http://zebu.uoregon.edu/~ser ) screamed all the time, for no good reason.
Finger Me for PGP Key / --- Jack Handy
NeXTMail Welcome!!! /
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