Delphi 6 Personal available for Download

[Larry Serflaten]

"Rob Teixeira" <RobTeixeira@@msn.com> wrote
> >
> >BTW: Do you see that 'new' up there? That's why I wonder if it can be
> >depreciated. What the **** is it doing as an 'attribute' on a parameter?
>
> New is a keyword (stressing the part about it not being an 'attribute' here
> ) - specifically one that creates an instance of a class (and in VB.NET
> calls the appropriate constructor). And unless I'm losing my mind completely,
> this is how it was done in VB6 as well. For example:
>
> Call MyCollection.Add(New Class1)

That statistic on some low number of VB programmers that actually use classes
comes to mind <eg>....

Yes, that is proper syntax, but as you will recall, so was this:

Let A = 5

Like Let, our friendly New operator is popping up all too often for my tastes....

And again like Let, it 'seems like' it should be able to be depreciated because
in .Net we no longer have default properties, so all references to objects, are
object references and not some default value.


> This is a matter of language symantics as well as reliable lexical rule.
> For example, using the collection bit above, it's possible that could be
> interpreted as passing the Class1 type instead of a new instance of Class1.

> "New" is pretty consistant with OO languages, and in the spirit of VB being
> more self-descriptive, it kinda makes sense anyway.

Yes, the filp side is that Basic is supposed to be simple to use, and if New
could be depreciated, we would be treating all those .Net 'objects' the same.
That would allow us to use value-types, just like we use reference-types. In
other words, they all would be treated similarly, using identical syntax in the
way they are declared, created, and destroyed.

> Add to that, what happens if you also have a function called MIMEPart? Which
> gets resolved?
> New is pretty unambiguous.

Using keywords, or stepping on scoping rules is a design consideration, as
in the past the one with the more local scope should be the one used. Yes,
New helps to show what is happening, but it is also being used numerous
times in simple VB.Net code, akin to what caused Let to be depreciated.

> Be careful who you call "we"
> I've seen a lot of VB6 code that uses New in the parameter list.

Again, that statistic of the percent of VB devs who use classes comes to mind.

I realize, and have been told of, why loosing New would not work, under current
'creation' rules, as are used in most all the other languages. But that's not a very
good argument since most other languages are meant to be a little closer to
the OS, than Basic was ever supposed to be. I am not saying I want VB dummed
down, I look at it as being more symetrical, more uniform, when we can treat all
the objects, either value-types or reference-types, with the same syntax.

Sure it may sound strange, but thats propably because the prior methods have been
in use for a long time, and most of the people who have any influence are accustomed
to treating objects as different beasts. But, with the .Net CTS, CLR, etc... everything
derives from the Object class, so 'everything' is an object, why must they be treated
differently?

LFS

[Craig Clearman]

Hi Zane,

Followups redirected to talk.editors.devx

>><repost X- added to Content...>
>
>I've posted about this problem in the sl newsgroup, still no reply from
>Devx Central Coordinating Committee.

I'd guess that they are trying to stop binary data from being posted
to the newsgroups. If they can interrogate the MIME content type, and
notice that it is still text, they will allow it. If it is not text,
they block it. They also seem to block anything UUENCODEd, probably
because the only way (AFAIK) to tell whether the result is binary or
text is to UUDECODE it, and they didn't want to work that hard.

Ciao, Craig