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Overloading and Smooth Operators

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the i-left-caution-in-my-other-pants dept.

An anonymous reader writes "IBM DeveloperWorks has an interesting article on operator ad hoc polymorphism (operator overloading for the uninitiated). With the increase in Java popularity and their banning of operator overloading (among other things) the author decides to show some of the great benefits that operator overloading can bring, as long as it is served with a 'healthy dose of caution.'"

3 of 75 comments (clear)

  1. Useful? Doubtful. by crow · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Sure, there are lots of things you can do with operator overloading, but there are good reasons to avoid them. Ultimately, it comes down to some basic questions:

    Will the use of overloading operators...

    *) reduce developement time?
    *) reduce the number of bugs?
    *) improve maintainability?

    In most cases, the answer is at best murky. Sure, if you're doing mathematical programming, adding complex numbers, rational numbers (tracking numerators and denominators instead of using floats), or something like that, then it's intiutively a good thing. But in most cases, it's not intuitive. When someone else comes to the project and tries to figure out what's going on, it's like having a bunch of extra macros for them to look up. Function calls make it much more obvious what's going on.

  2. A++ and ++A are NOT the same by GaelTadh · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Contrary to the article that states that a++ and ++a can be aliased to one call a.next() this is not how it should be done:
    a++ needs to return the value of a BEFORE it is incremented
    ++a needs to return the value of a AFTER it is incremented
    Sorry for the rant, I've just spent too long working with programmers that didn't know the difference
    (Not at my current job mind you ...)

    --
    Search your logs like the web: splunk!
  3. Re:What is this Groovy? by Shelrem · · Score: 4, Informative

    You're entirely wrong. Groovy is another language that targets the JVM. Groovy is either compiled to Java bytecode (and from there, JIT compiled to machine code by the JVM), or it's compiled at runtime in a JIT fashion. There is no interpreter written in Java that runs Groovy code. Groovy is just another language that targets the JVM.

    The benefit from all this is that in Groovy, you can interface to Java classes with literally no overhead. It's a brilliant idea for a new language because all the libraries are already there! This skips past one of the biggest stumbling blocks for new lanaguages.

    All in all, Groovy's a pretty interesting language that's worth looking into, but apparently you can't be bothered to do a Google search.