mixin + CTFE, to big a hammer??

[Andrei Alexandrescu (See Website For Email)]

John Reimer wrote:
> On Thu, 01 Mar 2007 13:25:43 -0800, Andrei Alexandrescu (See Website For
> Email) wrote:
> 
>> John Reimer wrote:
>>> On Thu, 01 Mar 2007 13:29:30 -0700, Hasan Aljudy wrote:
>>>
>>>> kris wrote:
>>>>> BCS wrote:
>>>>>> I have been thinking about the new functionality added by the code 
>>>>>> mixin and CTFE features and I'm thinking that they may be "to big a 
>>>>>> hammer" for may jobs.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Take my parser generator as an example. I don't think there would be 
>>>>>> anything to gain by using mixin as the primary method of code 
>>>>>> generation. Firstly, code generated this way will inherently be harder 
>>>>>> to read and debug. Also it doesn't do anything that tuple iteration 
>>>>>> doesn't do just as well.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> I will admit that there may be some things to be gained there by using 
>>>>>> mixin code (the terminal and action call backs could benefit a lot 
>>>>>> from this) but these are only minor changes. Also mixin code would be 
>>>>>> invaluable for some more complicated cases.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Why is this important? I think that many valuable types of code 
>>>>>> generation would benefit more by improving the static control 
>>>>>> structures (foreach/if/etc.) than they would from more mixin like 
>>>>>> features.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> One feature I would like is a true static foreach, one that can 
>>>>>> iterate over any built in type arrays or a tuple but does unrolling 
>>>>>> and per-loop semantic analysis like with tuples. This, in conjunction 
>>>>>> with CTFE, would make for huge improvements in what can readily be 
>>>>>> accomplished by moving much of the processing of the code generator 
>>>>>> input into function and out of templates.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Basically, I'm saying that while mixin+CTFE is good from many things, 
>>>>>> it shouldn't be pushed at the expense of the more mundane techniques.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Just some thoughts, what do you all think?
>>>>> D mixin, in it's current guise, is about equivalent to crack-cocaine. 
>>>>> Easily the worst thing that happened to the language, IMO.
>>>>>
>>>>> Just say no
>>>> Just give it time, wait for it to mature from experience.
>>> ??
>>>
>>> It's been around for a bit already. It doesn't seem to be getting better?
>> Patience is a virtue. :o) Besides, it's not like they started real bad.
>>
>> Andrei
> 
> 
> mixin's mixin's mixin's...that's all I'm saying.  

That's grammatically incorrect :o).

> They didn't start really good either. But, I guess you and I could go back
> and forth about whether that cup is half-full or half-empty. :)  Oh well.

Now we can go back and forth about spellchequers :oD.


Andrei