DMD 0.148 release

[Georg Wrede]

Tom wrote:
> Kyle Furlong says...
>> Georg Wrede wrote:
>>> Derek Parnell wrote:
>>> 
>>>> Walter is still living in the C/C++ past with this concept,
>>>> which is strange seeing he has implemented so many progressive
>>>> concepts in D. Boolean as an integer is just retro.
>>> 
>>> So am I.
>>> 
>>> Booleans have to be int. A boolean may have any "numeric" value,
>>> but if implicitly cast to a numeric type, it should return 1 or
>>> 0.
>>> 
>>> D IS A PRACTICAL PROGRAMMING LANGUAGE.
>>> 
>>> Forcing booleans to be 1/0 all the way is just academic, purist,
>>>  impractical bigotry. About as smart as having the bit type.
>>> 
>>> (Besides, if booleans, as some say here, are _only_ abstract
>>> concepts, then we might as well decide to have 0 mean true and 1
>>> mean false. Heh, there's only one truth but millions of lies! But
>>> we live in a world with other people. And computers.)
>>> 
>>> Now, specifying 0 to mean false and everything else to mean
>>> not-false, we go along with the hardware, the computer industry,
>>> half a century of programming PRACTICE, and make life less
>>> difficult for anybody with a professional programming background
>>> before moving to D.
>>> 
>>> Anybody who wants a tight-ass boolean, can define one for
>>> themselves.
>>> 
>>> ////
>>> 
>>> Now off to the Olympic Final in ice hockey: Finland - Sweden!!!
>> 
>> How would having a builtin, "purist" boolean type preclude using
>> integers as a boolean type, in all the old ways you describe? Just
>> as a curiosity, how have you been burned in the past by "purist"
>> thinking like this to make you so passionately against it?
> 
> I'd like to hear the answer :) . Have to stay at the purists side on
> this one. I like bool to be bool cause I'm that kind of guy that
> can't tolerate inconsistence (however I do tolerate it cause don't
> have much of a choice right now) and I'm putting all my hope in D. 
> However both (the purist and the pragmatic) ways could coexist in the
> same language I guess.

Well, then we could skip the logical operators, right? No more && or ||. 
Since all booleans would be strictly 0 or 1, they'd become obsolete.

And if booleans have to only be 0 or 1, then a whole lot of unnecessary 
conversions would be happening all over the place. Forget D speed.

Also, D is supposed to be a _systems_language_ for chrissake! Any kernel 
writing would then have to forgo booleans totally.

I'm all for features in D that enhance productivity, but deliberately 
dumbing down the language is getting a bit too far.

---

We've all had our fights with C, C++, and other related languages. But 
honestly, how many of us can confess to having problems with logical values?

And if someone here has such problems, I suggest switching to VB.

---

"Don't fix it if it ain't broke."