How can you claim you do C++ and not evwn know that virtual did NOT check if it was an override of what you wanted or you were introducing an entirely new function? Your understanding of C++ is quite poor. You have a wrong mental model even about how virtual functions worked. There was no way for the compiler to say you were overriding or not hence now way to emit an error!!No religions here, just objectively better features. I bet you did not refactor hierarchies pre and post-C++11 otherwise you would not say that. It is not that trivial and marking overrides catches all intents of fake overrides. Before that was not possible.
Seems suspicious to me that you claim to have used C++ for long. You do not understand even how virtual functions worked in the language.
You are making inflammatory statements without understanding what has been written; it is not appreciated;
I said;
>to use the "virtual" prefix keyword for virtual functions across the entire class hierarchy.
What is meant is that the entire signature of the virtual function including the "virtual" keyword is reproduced in all derived classes thus ensuring that no mistakes are made.
I also said;
>it gave the programmer the needed cue while the compiler doesn't care
It was just good programming discipline rather than depending on compiler crutches.
> The way it was done before was to use the "virtual" prefix keyword for virtual functions across the entire class hierarchy. Merely a discipline which was enforced religiously via coding guidelines
No, that did not enforce safety or solved the refactoring problem I told you. It seems you do not want to listen that override fullfills the case where you assert that you are overriding (and it will be a compile error). You have a misunderstanding and a wrong mental model for how virtual worked. It did not enforce anything, just declared a virtual function, no matter it was new or an override. virtual can introduce a new virtual function by accident.
Example:
class MyClass {
public:
virtual void f(int) {}
};
class MyDerived : public MyClass {
public:
virtual void f(int) {}
};
Refactor:
class MyClass {
public:
// NOTE: signature changed to double
virtual void f(double) = 0;
};
class MyDerived : public MyClass {
public:
// FORGOT TO REFACTOR!!! STILL COMPILES!!!
virtual void f(int) {}
//void f(int) override {} // COMPILE TIME ERROR!
};
> You are making inflammatory statements without understanding what has been written; it is not appreciated
No, I was not. I was just showing you do not know how the mechanism works with facts.
Above you have an example of why what you say does not work. I would recommend to talk more concretely and not to make too broad statements about tools you seem to not know in detail but it is up to you, I would not stop you. Just a friendly recommendation ;)
Have you really not understood what was written or are you just arguing for the sake of it? I cannot be spelling out every step of trivialities.
btw - Anybody who has been following this chain of responses can see who is the one using inflammatory language to hide their lack of comprehension and knowledge.
For the last time;
1) We did not depend on compiler crutches to help us.
2) We enforced coding discipline religiously so that all virtual functions are unambiguously identified with full signatures across the entire class hierarchy.
3) When you need to refactor you did simple search/replace on the full signature using grep/ctags/cscope/whatever across the entire codebase.
That is all there is to it.
This might be the most valueless discussion i have had on HN and that too over a utter triviality...sigh.
> 2) We enforced coding discipline religiously so that all virtual functions are unambiguously identified with full signatures across the entire class hierarchy.
> 3) When you need to refactor you did simple search/replace on the full signature using grep/ctags/cscope/whatever across the entire codebase.
That can break in a ton of ways. Still. For example, if the pattern is not correct for grep. ctags/cscope does not fully understand C++ also AFAIK. Then you are shifting from debug your code to debug your greps, etc.
Not sure how you did it exactly, but I see it as a fragile practice. Because you rely on absolute human discipline.
> This might be the most valueless discussion i have had on HN and that too over a utter triviality...sigh.
Sorry for that. Feel free to not reply. But do not take it to the emotional terrain so fast. I just argued since the start that C++ improvements are not an accumulation of "pet features" for the sake of it. It is you who presented that as facts without any kind of evidence in the first place.
To be clear, I do not care about C++ that much or anything particularly. But I have used it enough to identify one of your top posts as emotional and non-factual.
Your comment comes across as insincere. It reads like you have realized the triviality involved but not admitting it and still arguing that somehow programming discipline is not enough in this case (do we really need to talk about how to specify grep patterns?).
I should have probably said something like "override is just a compiler crutch for lazy programmers who can't be bothered to be careful in their job" but i thought it might get me banned from HN :-)
>It is you who presented that as facts without any kind of evidence in the first place.
My comments just in this whole thread refute your above statement.
>But I have used it enough to identify one of your top posts as emotional and non-factual.
I don't think you have understood the motivations behind the features you claim to have used, how they were solved earlier without those features and properly judging whether the change was worth it.
Seems suspicious to me that you claim to have used C++ for long. You do not understand even how virtual functions worked in the language.