DeRailed DSL (was Re: compile-time regex redux)

[Kyle Furlong]

Bill Baxter wrote:
> Kyle Furlong wrote:
>> Andrei Alexandrescu (See Website For Email) wrote:
> 
>> I understand that you are a successful computer scientist. I accept 
>> that you have had success with some books on the subject. I respect 
>> that you currently research in the field. None of this allows you the 
>> freedoms you have taken in the discussions you have been having.
> 
> Wow, this is sounding sillier and sillier.
> It seems pretty clear to me that the answer is simply that Andrei 
> doesn't really know enough about RoR give a concrete example of how 
> better metaprogramming would be useful for DeRailed.  He pretty much 
> said as much in the last mail.  But it would be good if he gave some 
> more practical, concrete examples of places where it would help.
> 
> Note that what's going on here is *talk* about features that may or may 
> not get into DMD any time soon.  In fact you could say this whole 
> discussion has been about *preventing* features from getting introduced. 
>  At least in an ad-hoc manner. This meat of this metaprogramming 
> discussion started with Walter saying he was thinking of adding compile 
> time regexps to the language.  Without any discussion about whether 
> that's a good thing or not and what the ramifications are, then it's 
> just going to happen, whether it's good for D or not.  So the question 
> becomes what should D look like?  Rather than add hoc features, what do 
> we really want D's metaprogramming to look like?
> 
> To me the discussion has all been about figuring out a clear picture of 
> what things *should* look like in the future w.r.t. metaprogramming in 
> order to convince Walter that throwing things in ad-hoc is not the way 
> to go.  Or maybe to find out that what he's thinking of throwing in 
> isn't so ad-hoc after all and actually makes for a nice evolutionary 
> step towards where we want to go.
> 
> As for whether that would help DeRailed, I dunno.  Sounds like kris has 
> a pretty clear idea that reflection would be much more useful to DeRailed.
> 
> As for whether DeRailed will help D, I also don't know.  I kinda wonder 
> though, becuase if someone wants RoR, why wouldn't they just use RoR? 
> Seems like it's a tough battle to unseat a champ like that.  I would 
> think that D would have a better shot at dominating by providing a great 
> solution to a niche which is currently underserved.  But that's just my 
> opinion.  Also I don't do web development, so that may be another part 
> of it.  But the description given of what Rails does so well, with all 
> kinds of dynamic this and on-the-fly that, really sounds more like what 
> a scripting language is good at than a static compile-time language.  I 
> mean the dominant web languages are Perl, Python, Ruby, Php, and 
> Javascript.  Not a compiled language in the bunch.  There's must be a 
> reason for that.  Even Java is interpreted bytecode.
> 
> As for Andrei having Walter's ear.  I think Andrei has Walter's ear 
> mostly because Andrei is interested in the same kinds of things that 
> interest Walter.  I think everyone can tell by now that Walter pretty 
> much works on solving the problems that interest him.   Right now (and 
> pretty much ever since 'static if') the thing that seems to interest him 
> most is metaprogramming.  Hopefully some day he'll get back to being 
> interested in reflection.  But if he's really got the metaprogramming 
> bug, then that may not be until after he's got D's compile time 
> framework to a point where he feels it's "done".  But only Walter knows.
> 
> 
> 
> --bb

Even coming at this debate from the perspective you outlined, Andrei's 
stance and tone have still been wrong. Instead of moving towards an 
understanding of what would be best for the people who are actually 
using D for real code, he instead disregards experience and advocates 
the theoretical ideal (from his perspective).

I simply cant understand why anyone, including Mr. Alexandrescu, would 
disregard the opinion of a man who has been working with D for more 
years in REAL code than almost anyone here.