What We Value

[Jan 2018] Are Value types valuable? This would be a rhetorical question for modern developers, especially ones fortunate to be working in languages like Swift. Value types do seem indispensable in their ability to free us from having to reason side-effects or worry about memory tracking. However, the answer is somewhat complicated when set in a pure object-oriented context, where breaking the central premises, of everything-is-an-object, does feel severe. The popularity of hybrid Object-Oriented languages like Java and Swift seem to indicate it is not so. But maybe that’s to do with the kinds of problems we are solving, and the level of comfort developers feel with the real-world inspired thinking vs thinking in terms of technology optimizations. Feel free to share your thoughts…