Import concerns revisited

[Walter Bright]

Derek Parnell wrote:
> On Thu, 13 Jul 2006 05:05:22 +1000, Walter Bright 
>> It's not always true, but languages that are less wordy in their 
>> example code tend to be picked up faster. People's first projects in D 
>> aren't going to be large, complex, professional products. They'll want 
>> to just try it out on something simple. That bar should be as low as 
>> reasonable.
> 
> I understand your desire to not 'frighten' new comers away. My concern 
> is that your "low as reasonable" seems to encourage poor programming 
> practices. Can you provide an example where the 'import' and 
> 'visibility' ideas being brainstormed at the moment would force example 
> code to look scary? At worst, someone might have to add 'public { ... }' 
> somewhere.

Not exactly what you're after, but consider the Java hello world program:

   class HelloWorldApp {
     public static void main(String[] args) {
         System.out.println("Hello World!");
     }
   }

There's a reason for everything there, but it's a little off-putting. 
Consider the D version:

   import std.stdio;

   void main() {
      writefln("Hello World!");
   }

I can go straighter towards what I want to do, without detouring through 
all the other requirements Java puts on things that seem, with such a 
simple program, to be beside the point.

Just for fun, here's an Ada version:

   With STANDARD_IO;
   Use STANDARD_IO;
   Procedure HELLO_WORLD is begin
     Put("Hello world!");
   End HELLO_WORLD;

No thanks! <g>