Re: [RFC Discussion] Typed Properties

On 3/16/16 2:30 PM, Andrey Andreev wrote:

Also, a LOT of code would end up with e.g. a default value of 0 for an integer property, still having to check if it was properly populated with a positive value - not much of an improvement over NULLs. Cheers, Andrey.

That's fine. Type checking doesn't say that a value is correct or meaningful; it just enforces the shape of the data. Vis, type enforcement tells you that the property is an integer; it doesn't tell you that the integer is within the range of legal values for the temperature of a room. It tells you that a property is a string; it doesn't tell you that the string doesn't contain NSFW words. Those are all application-level concerns, not type-level concerns, no matter what we do here. (Just like they are for parameters and returns already.) IMO, int/string/float is only a big deal on properties if you're using reflection for DB schema generation or similar, as it lets you remove an annotation. (That's a useful benefit, though.) The bigger impact for me is for class names, so I can enforce a given object type on a certain property. Knowing "at least it's not NULL" has a much larger benefit in that case, as you avoid many "method called on non-object 100 execution lines later than the actual bug, good luck finding it" errors. :-) -- --Larry Garfield