new blog post: “Classes are a Dumping Ground [...]”

posts/2014-01-29-classes-as-dumping-ground.md

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+---
+title: Classes are a Dumping Ground for Language Features
+description: When classes are the only structuring mechanism, they tend to accumulate features
+tags: programming
+...
+
+I am currently reading Benjamin C. Pierce's [Types and Programming
+Languages](http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~bcpierce/tapl/) (2002), and in chapter\
+18 -- on imperative objects and classes -- he offers an off-hand comment about
+why the class features in most OOP languages are so complicated.
+
+As someone who have spent countless hours writing C++ (and to some extent,
+Java), this immediately jumped out at me:
+
+> The class mechanisms in real-world object-oriented languages tend to be
+> complex and loaded with features---`self`, `super`, visibility annotations,
+> static fields and methods, inner classes, friend classes, annotations such as
+> `final` and `Serializable`, etc., etc.
+
+> The main reason for all this complexity is that, in most of these languages,
+> classes are the *only* large-scale structuring mechanism. Indeed, there is
+> just one widely used language---OCaml---that provides both classes and a
+> sophisticated module system. So classes in most languages tend to become
+> dumping ground for all language features that have anything to do with
+> large-scale program structure.