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

[kris]

Walter Bright wrote:
> Don Clugston wrote:
> 
>> Walter Bright wrote:
>>
>>> It's mundane in the sense that if we do it right, like the foundation 
>>> of a house, nobody will notice it. If we do it wrong, it'll be front 
>>> page like the crane that fell over last month and sliced through a 
>>> high rise condo.
>>>
>>> I couldn't be in this business if I didn't enjoy the mundane details 
>>> <g>.
>>
>>
>> It's interesting to me that the features I requested back around DMD 
>> 0.135, which made elementary metaprocessing of strings possible, were 
>> so mundane  --- "abcd"[2..4] being exactly equivalent to "bc", for 
>> example.
>> It seems to me that some other languages (*cough* C# *cough*) have 
>> tried to reach for the flashy stuff without getting the mundane things 
>> right.
>> Mundane is good.
> 
> 
> Oh, I agree. Making a great product (as Apple demonstrated) is about 
> getting the mundane details right.
> 
> The only problem is that such details don't make for a great 
> presentation. Nobody is going to switch to D because of const. But if 
> they do, they'll find it hard to switch away because of const (and 
> things like it) <g>.

Aye

> 
> The flashy stuff, though, is the stuff that piques peoples' interests 
> enough to give D a try.

Bling is very much in the eye of the beholder, and often has the inverse 
effect?