[swift-evolution] [Accepted] SE-0185 - Synthesizing Equatable and Hashable conformance

Tino Heth 2th at gmx.de
Sat Aug 19 05:44:08 CDT 2017


> Am 17.08.2017 um 20:11 schrieb Haravikk via swift-evolution <swift-evolution at swift.org>:
> 
> For me the whole point of a basic protocol is that it forces me to implement some requirements in order to conform; I can throw a bunch of protocols onto a type and know that it won't compile until I've finished it, developers get distracted, leave things unfinished to go back to later, make typos etc. etc. To me declaring a conformance is a declaration of "my type will meet the requirements for this make, sure I do it", not "please, please use some magic to do this for me"; there needs to be a clear difference between the two.

My conclusion isn't as pessimistic as yours, but I share your objections: Mixing a normal feature (protocols) with compiler magic doesn't feel right to me — wether it's Equatable, Hashable, Codable or Error.
It's two different concepts with a shared name*, so I think even AutoEquatable wouldn't be the right solution, and something like #Equatable would be a much better indicator for what is happening.

Besides that specific concern, I can't fight the feeling that the evolution process doesn't work well for proposals like this:
It's a feature that many people just want to have as soon as possible, and concerns regarding the long-term effects are more or less washed away with eagerness.

- Tino

* for the same reason, I have big concerns whenever someone proposes to blur the line between tuples and arrays
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