user-defined operators

[Vlad Dumitrescu]

From: "Valentin" <valentin@REDACTED>
> Personally, I think that user-defined-anything is not such a great idea,
> because inherently leads to more difficulties in understanding other people
> code, and ability to do this *fast* is a very important thing if you want to
> sustain a product/system/whatever beyond two months. On the other hand, I
> like to keep my mind open...

Hi,

I'd like to say that I used to think the same. Nowadays, I'm no longer that
sure. The reason is that user-defined-stuff is just a tool, and it can be used
or abused. In the former case, it can be very useful.

I think the most useful thing that can be done with user-defined-stuff is to
increase the level of abstraction.

If (for example) I can design a banking system by reasoning about payments
instead of tuples and lists that contain payment related data, then I think it
is much easier to get a better system (not last because it's easier to involve
non-developers that know the problem domain).

Using user-defined-stuff to just increase the level of confusion is of course
not good. ;-)

regards,
Vlad