Unify backend for enums/sum types about mita HOT 2 OPEN

Unifying the C code so that Sum Generators can be reused is nice

But, if Sum Types and Enum Types end up having the same basic functionality, except that Enum can not hold Data, I would prefer that Enum Types are completely removed from the language.

It does not make sense to me to have two language constructs, where one is just a less powerful version of the other, but otherwise they behave exactly the same and have exactly the same usage.

This would seem especially true in regards to the fact that Eclipse Mita's intended purpose is to abstract the C language into something higher level, so that people do not have to learn, know, and understand C. Enums therefore would become obsolete in light of Sum Types.

Edit: If Enum is a Subset of Sum Types, and this makes Enum obsolete, then Enum would not be obsolete if Enum had syntactic use that Sum Types do not have.

from mita.

Mita should have enums - at least on a syntactic level as that's what many people expect. Name a language without enum support, or people complaining of the lack thereof. It just feels natural* to be able to write something like

enum Foobar { 
    foo,
    bar 
}

,* natural in the sense that this construct looks like something I've seen in many different languages, such as Java or Typescript to name two.

Also, our enums differ from C enums in that they cannot be cast to integers, i.e. are symbols "only".

All that said, I'm all for unifying enums with sum types on the backend but keeping the enum syntax.

from mita.