Re: abstract sub programs overriding

[Hyman Rosen <hyrosen@mail.com>]

Robert I. Eachus wrote:
> DK is right DON'T DO THAT So if you really want to

So he's not right, because it's not impossible, just very unusual.

Anyway, let's see if I understand. You are saying that in Ada, it
is unusual to call Parent.Initialize(Parent_Type(Child_Object)) from
Child's Initialize. That seems odd to me; how does the child know that
the parent can do without this call? If it can be so blithely ignored,
what good is having it in the first place?

You also say that "It is much more common, however, for such a call to
be done for only the parent part of the object, for example when creating
a child object using an aggregate." Isn't it the case that when you do that,
Child's Initialize won't be called at all?

You also say that as a matter of policy, Initialize should not make
a dispatching calls because it is likely to be incorrect. That's what
C++ avoids by preventing dispatching from going to parts of the final
object which are not yet constructed.