Adding Unicode operators to D

[bearophile]

Bill Baxter:

>was actually more work than it would be to just use D for everything.<

Mixing languages isn't nice, I agree. That's why I too use D for several purposes.

But if you have to change your code very often (and if your problems are of a certain kind that allow a natural vectorization), then having vectorial (short) code may have some advantages), think about how much C++ code you need to write to implement the programs of this book:
http://wiki.deductivethinking.com/wiki/Python_Programs_for_Modelling_Infectious_Diseases_book
So it allows a more explorative way of coding.


>Sure Python does have some nice features as a language that D lacks, but from 10,000 ft  D is a lot closer to Python than C++ in terms of ease of use.<

My experience with the ShedSkin compiler shows me that most of those features that D lacks (complex slices, list comps, generators, short syntax, some near-zero-cost safeties, etc) are absent because of cultural or inertial reasons present in the brain of people used to C/C++, and not because they can't be present/added in a language like D.
ShedSkin translates Python code to clean C++ code, showing that it can be done, it gives advantages, and it's not too much difficult to do. It shows once and forever, that you can have a C++-class language with a short and nice syntax, etc.
Hopefully the Delight language has less of the cultural inertia coming from C/C++, so it may become a better compromise than D itself.


>I've got my dflat and gobo (http://www.dsource.org/projects/multiarray) that are working for me pretty well.  They could use some full-time loving to make more operations work intuitively, but the basics work ok.<

Nice stuff, lot of stuff. More comments require more study of that code. D (Tango) may gain from having more batteries.

Bye,
bearophile