Re: operation can be dispatching in only one type

[Serge Robyns <serge.robyns@gmail.com>]

On Thursday, 26 November 2015 16:16:34 UTC+1, J-P. Rosen  wrote:
unction ".X" (Left : T) return Integer);
> >> >  
> >> > P.S. Surely, at some point there would a kludge invented with aspects as it
> >> > was done for array indexing...
> > Got you.  Yes that would be nice but my need is current :-(
> > I agree that this would be a marvelous enhancement.
> 
> Nothing marvelous, just saving keystrokes. You can always make a private
> type and explicit subprograms to access "virtual" components.
> 

Isn't the purpose of higher programming languages not to save keystrokes, simplifying abstractions, enabling more powerful algorithms to be expressed directly?  My first language was assembly language.  I've been programming 100K's of code and could literally do whatever I wanted, even change the OS behavior through hooking into or jumping at very specific places inside the OS ROM.  I felt very mighty, my code was actually very readable and I was a very fast programmer on top of that.  But it took always more effort to build or call a callable subroutine than just using high level programming language, I had to take care of building a stack, fill the right values into the right registers, recover return values, etc. where as otherwise I could just write I := Integer'Value(S);

True, assembly isn't portable but if this is the only purpose then we would have stick to "simple" languages such BCPL for example.  C would never have appeared, Ada would not have been invented nor Smalltalk and the list is almost endless.