I write a lot of go. I tried to write a lot of rust but fell into lifetime traps. I really want to leave C++ but I just can’t without something that’s also object oriented.
Not a dig at functional, it’s just my big codebases are logically defined as objects and systems that don’t lend itself to just being a struct or an interface.
Inheritance is why I’m stuck in C++ land.
I would love to have something like rust but that supports classes, virtual methods, etc. but I guess I’ll keep waiting.
In Rust you can have structs with any number of methods defined on them, which is functionally not that different from a class. You get interface like behavior with traitsz and you get encapsulation with private/public data and methods.
Yes it does. Unless I can attach a trait to a struct without having to define all the methods of that trait for that struct. This is my issue with interfaces and go. I can totally separate out objects as interfaces but then I have to implement each implementation’s interface methods and it’s a serious chore when they’re always the same.
For example: Playable could be a trait that plays a sound when you interact with it. I would need to implement func interact for each object. Piano, jukebox, doorbell, etc. With inheritance, I write it once, add it to my class, and now all instances of that object have interact. Can I add instance variables to a trait?
This saves me time and keeps Claude out of my code. Otherwise I ask Claude to implement them all, modify them all, to try to keep them all logically the same.
I also don’t want to go type soup in order to abstract this into something workable.
You can use a struct that the other structs have as a field. The trait can then operate on that struct.
I'm not trying to convince you to use Rust. If you prefer C++ have at it. I was just trying to point out that most patterns in C++ have a fairly close analogy in Rust, just with different tradeoffs.
Yeah go has embedded structs. It’s ugly and allows one to address the fields on the parent and it exposes the struct (with the same fields) so it’s kind of a head scratcher.
To be honest, it’s been 3 years since I looked at rust and I might try again. I still prefer inheritance because some things just are-a thing. I also love ECS and components and see traits as that. I just wish I could store local state in those.
You can store state in the struct and then define a method in the trait to return the struct. Then all your default methods can use the "getter" to access the struct and it's state. The only thing you have to do is embed the struct and implement that one "getter" method to return it. I don't think it's much more boilerplate then utilizing inheritance.
Fyrox, a game engine written in Rust, uses an ECS and several object oriented patterns in their design. Might be a good reference if your interested. The rust book also has a section on OOP patterns in Rust.
I think it's Fyrox anyway. I remember the creator of a Rust game engine talking about it in an interview on Developer Voices. It could have been Bevy I guess, but I don't think so.
Yeah that’s what I did and it’s ugly. It works, and allows me to attach multiple behaviors but I would have to initialize them and write that boilerplate code to return them.
I think I might be able to do it with a macro but I’m not a rust guy so I’m limited by my knowledge.
I respect your preferences, but I am unlikely to add this sort of OOP. Ideally there'll be no subtyping at all in Rue. So you'll have to keep waiting, I'm afraid. Thanks for checking it out regardless!
As a long time C++ user, I’m curious why you like inheritance and virtual methods so much.
I maintain a medium sized, old-ish C++ code base. It uses classes and inheritance and virtual methods and even some multiple inheritance. I despise this stuff. Single Inheritance is great until you discover that you have a thing that doesn’t slot nicely into the hierarchy or when you realize that you want to decompose an interface (cough, base class) into a couple of non-hierarchically related things. Multiple inheritance is an absolute mess unless you strictly use base classes with pure virtual methods and no member variables. And forcing everything into an “is a” relationship instead of a “has a” relationship can be messy sometimes.
I often wish C++ had traits / or Haskell style type classes.
Protected and private inheritance are C++'s equivalent to traits, and they don't suffer from the usual issues of multiple inheritance. As for type classes, check out concepts. By no means am I trying to sell C++, I don't touch it myself, but it doesn't leave you completely adrift in those seas.
In the sense of supporting mixins that don't necessarily pollute your public API. The overlap with other languages isn't perfect, and traits in the stdlib refer to a rather different template-based thing, but I don't think any language has the monopoly on a canon definition of traits. Certainly they're going to be different than traits in Self, which iirc coined the term.
Not a dig at functional, it’s just my big codebases are logically defined as objects and systems that don’t lend itself to just being a struct or an interface.
Inheritance is why I’m stuck in C++ land.
I would love to have something like rust but that supports classes, virtual methods, etc. but I guess I’ll keep waiting.