in reply to Autoboxing: Yes or No?

Autoboxing is used in Java, C# and Ruby.

I don't think you should be including Ruby, which has no non-object primitives to autobox.

Autoboxing seems kind of nifty, but I'm not sure if it gains enough to be worthwhile (though I thought it was cool at first). If you haven't already, read through the "controversial" thread above and then let me know what you think.

It is the kind of thing that can look good on the surface, but instead of bringing any real unification of objects and primitives, it just brings inconsistencies to your code.

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Re: Re: Autoboxing: Yes or No?
by tilly (Archbishop) on Jan 01, 2004 at 03:35 UTC
    Exactly. Ruby shouldn't be included. As for the rest, Linus Torvalds put it well on a different topic:
    ...You've then superglued the broken parts together and said "if you look at it from the right angle you cannot SEE the cracks".

    But the cracks ARE THERE! They make the system more complex internally, and even when you don't see the cracks you may notice that the thing doesn't quite stand up straight.

    If you want everything to work as an object, then you really need to start with it done right. Because if you don't and try to reverse-engineer things, then you wind up with something like tie - it looks cool but never quite works properly when you push it.
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