Namespaces as Sugar (was: complexity tax)

[liorean]

> On Wed, May 28, 2008 at 12:48 AM, Maciej Stachowiak <mjs at apple.com> wrote:
>>> I want to say thanks for making this proposal (open namespace search only
>>> for lexical references). It leaves most of the use-cases I cited intact.
>>> Well done, good compromise (not complete evisceration of property
>>> qualifiers, or dismissal of unqualified import).

While I like the idea, it doesn't address at least two of the use
cases for namespaced properties:
- Having both a fully typed and an untyped version of the same method
on the object, allowing code to switch through just opening a
namespace if the programmer knows their code is type consistent.
- Allowing user classes or objects to present interfaces overriding
behaviour inherited from Object which were internal and unexposeed in
ES3.

The first point is mainly a convenience feature.

The second point can be addressed using new syntactic forms for each
such case. (If using the form "operator [no newlines here] ident",
that would be a safe way to do it since all code looking like that
cause a syntax error in ES3.) I don't know if that's a good or bad
idea though.
-- 
David "liorean" Andersson