Do we really need const?

[Jarrett Billingsley]

"Robert Fraser" <fraserofthenight at gmail.com> wrote in message 
news:fcmngv$qhq$1 at digitalmars.com...

> I'm not suggesting D go dynamically-typed (doesn't work so well in a 
> compiled language),

Bit of a sidetrack here.  Dynamic typing, in the sense that variables don't 
have types, certainly doesn't go well in a compiled language, but type 
inference, something that ends up looking very similar to dynamic typing, 
_does_, can, and has been implemented well in compiled languages.  ML and 
Haskell are examples.  Nemerle as well, because even though it compiles to a 
VM it's still a statically typed VM.  It's almost like IFTI or variable 
declaration type inference (auto x = 5), but extended to virtually 
_everything_.

One language I've seen that I really liked was Bla.  It uses Haskell-style 
type inference, but it still allows you to explicitly type things if you 
want.  In this way you can do away with typing variables/params in a vast 
majority of the cases, and in the instances when you _want_ something to be 
typed, or when the type inference system can't figure it out on its own, you 
can type it manually.

Of course something like this would probably be far too much of a departure 
for a language like D.