dmd 2.029 release

[Georg Wrede]

Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
> Craig Black wrote:
>> I like very much the direction D2 is going now.  Language refactoring 
>> and enhancements driven by the goal of more elegant implementation of 
>> standard libraries.  This approach seems very practical and 
>> promising.  Thank you very much and keep it up!
>>
>> -Craig
> 
> Thanks. Walter pointed out to me something interesting - STL is 
> non-intuitive. That doesn't make it any less true (as a pursuit of the 
> most generic incarnation of fundamental structs and algos). It's 
> non-intuitive the same way complex numbers and relativity theory are 
> non-intuitive.
> 
> No language has ever managed to comprehend STL by sheer chance. (This in 
> spite of e.g. C# adding a boatload of new features with each release.) 
> There are two that can express it at all: C++ and D. Both C++ and D had 
> to be changed to allow STL to exist, and became better languages as a 
> result. The range shtick and D's support for lambdas is taking STL 
> support to a whole new level.
> 
> The downside is, it's rather difficult to explain the STL to anyone 
> using other languages and wanting to just figure what the STL buzz is 
> all about.

I wrote my MSc thesis about the STL. I think the conceptual idea was 
clean and clear, and at the time it was reasonably easy to explain it to 
even the professors. ;-)

Today, however, and especially with the advanced implementation we have 
here in D, if someone has no prior knowledge of the STL way of thinking, 
it may be really hard to get them to 'get it'. There are too many trees 
up front to grasp the forest.

What's sad, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_Template_Library
really sucks at introducing the STL on a conceptual level. Even worse, 
that is actually the only thing it *should* do. Everyting else is optional.