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7404 :: UFCS and templates

• ggibson (orginal) [2021-01-20T13:54:29+01:00] view original

  What's your workflow to know what you can and cannot use UFCS on? And especially how do you teach newcomers UFCS? I am tempted to err on the side of:

  • Use an IDE (like alaviss' nvim plugin) that shows you the type of what you're writing, and then
  • Only use UFCS for procs and funcs and NOTHING else (even though sometimes it might work)

  For instance, something.toSeq only works on something that are iterable to begin with and fails to compile otherwise (see the manual on the limitations of UFCS). My above rule of thumb would only allow toSeq(something), but this only works if and IDE is an integral part of being able to program, OR you have a terrific memory (I do not).

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• xigoi (orginal) [2021-01-20T14:34:12+01:00] view original

  UFCS can be used if the left argument is something that by itself has a type. Unfortunately, Nim still doesn't have first-class iterators, which is the reason why you can't use UFCS on them.

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• ggibson (orginal) [2021-01-20T14:38:46+01:00] view original

  UFCS can be used if the left argument is something that by itself has a type

  That is more or less how I think about it when programming Nim. Is that phrasing how you would recommend teaching newcomers about UFCS?

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• xigoi (orginal) [2021-01-20T22:41:42+01:00] view original

  Honestly, I'd probably just teach them how it works in general and when they crash into this issue, explain why it doesn't work here.

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