Syntactic Heroin

  • Authors:

  • Rodney Bates

  • Affiliations:

  • Wichita State University

  • Venue:
  • Queue - Security
  • Year:
  • 2005

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Abstract

User-defined overloading is a drug. At first, it gives you a quick, feel-good fix. No sense in cluttering up code with verbose and ugly function names such as IntAbs, FloatAbs, DoubleAbs, or ComplexAbs; just name them all Abs. Even better, use algebraic notation such as A+B, instead of ComplexSum(A,B). It certainly makes coding more compact. But a dangerous addiction soon sets in. Languages and programs that were already complex enough to stretch everyone’sability suddenly get much more complicated.