I don't agree on this one, there is plenty of places where you want a Kind field, e.g. when your navigating, searching. There are good reasons they have it in JDT...

Do you agree that for example
x.getKind()==Kind.CLAUSE
is exactly the same as
x instanceof IErlFunctionClause
?

And
f(x.getKind())
is the same as
f(IErlFunctionClause.class)
?

Also, do you agree that using instanceof as a discriminator function in if or switch is not OOP? It is something you'd do in C.

One example is the org.erlide.ui.editors.erl.outline.ErlangElementImageProvider.getImageDescriptionFromKind(Kind) function. It does a switch on getKind, and you don't want a parallell class structure for the imagedescriptors. There are many others, IErlElement.visit, IErlModule.getPreprocessorDef, etc.

I can't find any place where using getKind can't be replaced with instanceof or getClass. The latter is slightly more verbose, true.

I still believe that it's easier to introduce a bug with getKind (for example by forgetting to update one of the many places where a new value has to be added), but it might be a subjective opinion.


We don't need to do anything about this now.

Updating tickets (#802, #52, #64, #460, #720, #749, #769, #775, #776, #786, #851, #83, #93, #149, #157, #163, #179, #194, #195, #222, #228, #274, #281, #283, #285, #335, #339, #349, #351, #358, #364, #373, #375, #379, #383, #401, #405, #409, #411, #413, #422, #424, #425, #428, #434, #442, #443, #449, #450, #454, #471, #479, #492, #523, #535, #537, #543, #561, #564, #574, #590, #598, #599, #603, #610, #615, #619, #632, #634, #636, #639, #640, #641, #642, #643, #645, #658, #660, #662, #664, #665, #674, #677, #684, #685, #688, #689, #693, #694, #695, #696, #699, #700, #707, #709, #719, #736, #743, #744, #746, #748, #759, #760, #761, #762, #774, #778, #780, #788, #789, #796, #798, #799, #800, #803, #809, #812, #813, #816, #820, #822, #829, #836, #837, #840, #841, #842, #848, #849, #850, #853, #854, #855, #856, #857, #860, #867, #868, #871, #872, #873, #875, #41, #159, #372, #429, #489, #577, #601, #622, #667, #679, #767, #768, #772, #785, #771)

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