One Minute Evaluations for 11-13 November

CS 509 - Advanced Programming II

• Topic: Topics learned: Rule of 3; dynamic memory in C++ classes; casting in C++; polymorphism with templates.

  Question: Is it safe to assume with only reference and no explicit initialization one can eliminate constructors?

  One minute response: I'm not sure I understand the question.

• Topic: This week we learned that Java decided to mimic the worst kind of obsolete polymorphism from C, and templates can be gnarly.

  Question: Why?

  One minute response: Why what?

• Topic: Templates are really confusing, especially the declaration and usage.

  Question: Why do we need cast constructors really? Is it [?] in practical sense at all?

  One minute response: Because it can use initialization lists, cast constructors can do a few things that a member function can't, such as initialize constant member fields; initialization lists are also more efficient than setting field values in method body. Otherwise, you could put the code in a cast constructor in a regular method.

• Topic: We talked about template functions, [?].

  Question: What is the difference between polymorphism and function overloading?

  One minute response: Function overloading is a form of polymorphism, although not a strong one. The problem is you have to explicitly list the types to be overloaded, which requires linear (at best) effort; ideally, polymorphism should cover all types with constant effort.

• Topic: Classes and conversions, template functions.

• Topic: Function objects, function pointers, template functions.

This page last modified on 16 July 2003.