> >> Well, I know a good argument against it. So good in fact that it's the
reason
> >> why every games programmer I know doesn't use operator overloading: It
hides
> >> processing.
>
> This might be a 'learning' problem if you aren't aware of the
> operators 'hidden' complexity.

My point is that a+b takes a different length of time according to the types of
a and b, where as MyMatrixAddFunction(a,b) takes the same length of time always,
plus you can search for it to see where it's executed in the code, plus you can
stick a nice big comment on the prototype of it saying "//avoid calling this
unless really necessary, it's very slow" so that anyone who doesn't know how to
add these two things has to look up the function prototype and read the comment
and reconsider the code they're writing.

I'm not trying to suggest the source looks nicer with more function calls, it
certainly doesn't. I'd even say I like operator overloading a lot, it's
extremely useful in high-level programming applications. I'm merely saying that,
in practice, it makes it easier to write code that is much more complex to
execute than it is to read or write. This is both it's strongest and weakest
point.

> The macros required to do trivial colour/vector arithmetic are
> 'information hiding' in the worst sense. They blow up source code and
> add visual noise which makes it sometimes almost impossible to see
> what's going on.

As I said, I support using + for vectors since that's what it will compile to.
Although I don't really see your point about visual noise, function calls
certainly make it harder to write clearly readable code but since it's harder
all it takes is more effort. Programming isn't about making things easier for
the programmer, it's about making the end result better. In application software
or high level programming these two ideas are very compatible, but in time
critical stuff like game engines people like me have to give ourselves headaches
trying to optimize out one cycle in a render loop in order to improve the
performance of the game. Operator overloading hinders us in this quest.

Damn that made me sound so cool...

-- 
Tek
www.evilsuperbrain.com

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