preparing for const, final, and invariant

[bobef]

I am not asking Walter to Write GUI libraries, but to fix what is preventing other people from doing so.

And of course there are many console applications and daemons, but let get down on earth. In many cases GUI applications are easier to use than console ones. So many Linux console apps are getting GUI front ends. Although many geeks won't believe it times are changing and the console interface has no future.


Chris Nicholson-Sauls Wrote:

> bobef wrote:
> > Without any disrespect to the great work you are doing, let me put it in another way: In order to make a good, *usable* application, is this "const final scope" thing more important or having a good GUI library? There are not many console applications these days, you know. And they are not very *usable*. And, as we all know, choosing a GUI for D is not like choosing a GUI for C++. So why instead of adding nerd stuff to the language, make it sooooo much more *usable*, by fixing the reflection stuff that Tioport needs to produce libraries which are not 10mb or 20mb? Or... it kind of sucks when half of my code won't compile, or compiles in specific order only, because of some forward reference errors. I don't even know what forward reference is, but I know that using (simple) consts and aliases is something perfectly legal. I don't know if this second example is more usable than the final cosnt thing, just because I can't think of any use of it, but this is because I rarely u
> se fancy stuff that breaks my code in the next version of DMD... But I am making this example to show that D (or DMD) still have so many things to fix the way it is now, we don't need some new fancy stuff before the old things work....
> > 
> 
> Well here's something: I don't /want/ Walter working on a GUI lib.  That's already being 
> taken care of, with DFL, Tioport/SWT, Harmonia, and gtkD.  (Probably a few others.) 
> Choice is good, and there it is.  What I /do/ want is Walter working on the things that 
> we've all been asking for all this long while -- and that seems to be precisely what he's 
> doing.
> 
> Some of us do still write console applications, and daemons with no direct user input at 
> all.  (I look at the loooong list of software on our Linux boxes and remark that out of 
> all of these, precious few have any GUI at all.  Mainly, Kate and KDE.)  If D were to go 
> in a direction that only focused on application development, and only on graphical apps... 
>   I'd probably have a good cry, give a salute, and just start using Ruby for everything.
> 
> Meanwhile, ask me sometime about the dozens of bits of at least one of my projects the new 
> const'ness concepts will allow me to actually /write/ in a sane way in the first place. 
> The project is on hold, has been for quite some while, all just waiting for something like 
> this.
> 
> -- Chris Nicholson-Sauls
> 
> PS - Forward reference is using a symbol before it is defined.  Most cases of forward 
> reference in D are accounted for and resolved by the compiler, but there are a handful 
> that it still can't handle.  Pray some day it can handle them all -- here's hoping.