[Python-Dev] type categories

David Abrahams David Abrahams" <dave@boost-consulting.com
Sat, 17 Aug 2002 14:18:56 -0400


From: "Andrew Koenig" <ark@research.att.com>


> Michael> I may be getting lost in subthreads here, but are we still
> Michael> talking about multimethods?
>
> Well, I started by talking about type categories and ways of
> writing programs that tested them.  Dave Abrahams said, in effect,
> that I was really just talking about multimethods.  I'm still
> not convinced.

Huh? That's certainly not what I thought I was saying. I was saying that a
reason I thought it was important to be able to test type categories (what
Guido calls "look before you leap") was for implementing multiple dispatch.
In other words, an idiom which most people agree is usually a bad choice
for user code might be a great choice for a generalized library or language
facility.

It's pretty hard to see how you could construe my remarks as asserting some
interpretation of what you were saying.

-----------------------------------------------------------
           David Abrahams * Boost Consulting
dave@boost-consulting.com * http://www.boost-consulting.com