Motivated by Nimrod I changed my C#-like model to C++-like one (the desire of fast execution also played role, watch fascinating lecture “Modern C++: What You Need to Know” by Herb Sutter). It was crazy move, I know, but at the same time very educational, since I really didn’t designed type system for Skila, but rather borrowed it.
Hard way and depressing (I fixed one thing, just to discover two more flaws) I learned how many issues sound type system involves. Take for example “this” pointer — feature in C#, bug in C++ (yeah, pointer to stack just asks for trouble). A function with interface as parameter — feature in C#, bug in C++ (because of value slicing). And so on and on…
When I came to generic types with constraints my head was already spinning. What worse the syntax enriched with nullable marker is even more cluttered than in C++.
func foo(x ref ~ptr? Vector<Int>)
does not look especially charming, doesn’t it? Explanation: function takes mutable nullable pointer to view (read only) of “Vector” passed by reference.
So honestly I am not sure I will keep this type model, yet some simple tasks in C# are not available exactly because of the type system, like managing the layout of the data in memory, and those simple tasks hurt the performance badly.
I just hope I am not searching for Holy Grail… Except for this, the good news is I’ve done it! Ahead of me is polishing, refactoring and writing more test cases.
Skila 