Class Browsers vs Static Types (Re: Inefficiency of __getattr__)

[Bruce Hoult]

In article <8rst48$iqoq6$1 at ID-9852.news.cis.dfn.de>, "Joachim 
Durchholz" <joachim.durchholz at gmx.de> wrote:

> C++ compilers started as C preprocessors. Yet enough people liked C++ so
> that it would be accepted.

This is wrong.  C++ has *always* been a true compiler that just happened 
to produce C output instead of assembler (as indeed many functional 
languages do).  Objective C was originally a preprocessor (and it shows 
in the syntax).

The litmus test: you should *never* get any error messages from the 
underlying C compiler, even when you present faulty code to the front 
end (C++, Scheme, Dylan, Mercury, ...) compiler.  If you do then it's a 
bug in either the front end compiler or the C compiler.

-- Bruce