const challenge

[bearophile]

Oskar Linde:

> In my book, there are only two kinds of plain values. Constant and 
> variable. Why D needs 4 kinds is beyond me.

It may be beyond you (and me) but it may be a good idea anyway :-) There things in some Haskell code that I need to understand still, but I don't criticize them.


> I don't even know why I bothered writing all this down. It is not 
> like I have any illusions about it making any difference what so ever.

I have read this post of yours and I agree with most things you say.
If lot of people think about this like you then maybe GDC will not grow all the features of D 2.x ;-)


> In the meantime, D1 works well and remains a great language that is a 
> pleasure to use. ;)

But it seems a dead end.

I am not expert enough to offer real suggestions, but I can express a general opinion regarding the current const regime of 2.x: it may be more "correct" and well designed, but sometimes in programming "worse is better", it means that a simpler system, even if it has some known flaws, may be preferred in the long term. Trying to do the "right" thing may lead to more problems than choosing a simpler way. That's probably why C is used today too, despite its load of faults and deficiencies. This means that maybe a simpler constant system maybe be "better" even if it's "worse".

Bye,
bearophile