Re: Rather, DSSLs increase modularity, productivity

[Michael Vanier <address@hidden>]

I had a problem that needed multimethods, and you can fake MM fairly easily
with downcasting.  The alternatives were not very appealing.

Mike

> From: Neelakantan Krishnaswami <neelk@gs3106.sp.cs.cmu.edu>
> Date: Tue, 18 Nov 2003 19:41:13 -0500
> 
> Michael Vanier writes:
>  > 
>  > Side note: I find ocaml's object system way too restrictive precisely
>  > because it forbids downcasting (casting an object to the class of a
>  > subclass of the object's class, which might fail at runtime).  You can
>  > upcast, but that can be statically checked.
> 
> What do you use downcasting for? I've never needed it, ever, but I'm
> always on the lookout for new programming idioms.
> 
> -- 
> Neel Krishnaswami
> neelk@cs.cmu.edu
>