[Grace-core] Abstract methods/classes

[Timothy Jones]

On 04/06, James Noble wrote:
> On 4/06/2014, at 13:34 pm, Kim Bruce <kim at cs.pomona.edu> wrote:
> 
> > We still need to figure out abstract methods. 
> 
> but I found an old Nov 2013 email saying we'd agreed on 
> 
> method foo {abstract}
> 
> and minutes from Feb 2014 saying the same thing.
> This is basically Smalltalk's "subclassResponsibilty" message. Running it raises an error.
> 
> There's an earlier email of mine proposing 
> 
> method foo is abstract {}
> 
> using an annotation allows a class to be abstract while still having some concrete features 
> but there may be issues having the same annotation for both classes and methods
> or teaching people about annotations before abstract classes.
> 
> for me I still lean towards an annotation but I'm not sure why.
> Michael / Tim - any particular preferences? 

I'm leaning back to the annotation approach, where it just bans you from calling
it directly, but allows you to call it through super or inherit from it. That
way it works for both methods and class methods.

-- 
Tim