Re:The Java type system is broken
by moron4hire on Thursday July 19, 2018 @02:59PM
(#17569316)
This is probably why it's important to not anthropomorphize your code. Code abstractions do pretty much one thing: they prevent the duplication of code. They each do this in their own ways that make certain deduplications easier than others. If you focus on that, the broken analogy of taxonomy doesn't matter, and you can easily hop between the religious war camps of "OOP vs FP" and "Inheritance vs Composition". Figure out what you want your ergonomics to be and just go with that.
I make analogies to taxonomy because before I learned software a biology teacher told me that taxonomy is also broken, so when I learned type theory it felt like a similar kind of broken.
We think putting wings to a mammal is adding behavior, when in fact it is subtracting it. Adding wings on a mammal means you have a bat, or a flying squirrel.
You have narrowed the potential of this type, not enhanced it. Anything else a mammal might do that bats can't? You've taken all of that away. Mammals with fly() aren't the fastest land animals. They don't have the record for holding their breath, or hibernation time. They can't dive(), speak() or useTool(). Really they're kinda useless except for vermin control.