Feature request: one-statement functions without brackets

Jari-Matti Mäkelä jmjmak at utu.fi.invalid
Tue Apr 3 00:09:07 PDT 2007


David B. Held wrote:

> Personally, I find Don Clugston's metaprograms to be fairly exquisite,
> because they demonstrate a simplicity and power that similar programs in
> other languages stuggle for.  Of course, Lisp can pretty much do
> anything that any other language can, within reason, but at the expense
> of syntax.  Don's programs still look like programs.  Haskell can be
> even more elegant and concise, but odds are, you will never be able to
> drop down into inline assembly and hack some SSE instructions into an
> inner loop to squeeze that last bit of performance out of your program.
>  The fact that Walter gives you a screwdriver and lets you get at the
> bare metal is not something to be taken lightly, but it does require
> some sacrifices in the language (you could never give the kind of
> security guarantees that Java can, for instance).  You can't eat your
> cake and have it too.

Sorry, I was not trying to disparage Walter's or Don's work. Sorry if I
sounded like that.

> And if you *really* want to see the language succeed, lend a helping
> hand.  If you haven't noticed, there isn't exactly a Sun or IBM or
> Microsoft throwing its weight behind D...yet.  Most people would agree
> that the success of Java had as much to do with its rich library set as
> anything else.  There's a bajillion different D libraries you could
> write, and each one has the potential to make D more attractive to other
> programmers.  Not only that, but the front-end is completely Open
> Source, so you can even experiment with your own feature ideas without
> even bugging Walter.  Finally, keep in mind that tools really leverage
> the productivity available with a language.  Helping out with toolchains
> is probably the single biggest help you could offer, and there are
> plenty of projects that could use the manpower (or womanpower, as the
> case may be).

Yes, I know and agree.



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