Re: [Vala] Operator overloading

[James Cox <jamescox84 googlemail com>]

I personally think operator overloading is a good feature, and that the only arguments for and against it are personal preference.  There is no technical reason not to include them, allowing those who like and understand operator overloading to use the feature.  I think it would be a shame not to implement them just because we were scare of what some programmers might do with them.  Remember this is free software, we should be giving users freedom, not trying to protect them from them selfs.

The only reason I see not to implement them is that it might be quite difficult.  GObject doesn't really having any notion of the concept in its API (it wouldn't make sense) so mappings maybe harder to maintain.  But maybe we should be looking at these problems instead of arguing about style.  Yes it's sugar, but sugar makes programming sweeter.  I mean isn't Vala a little like sugar for C and GObject API's?

I for one would like to see this feature, it would make working with mathematics librarys (like GMP) more intuitive.  I agree it can be misused, but hay that's the descition of the idividual programmer, not us.