Remove complex and imaginary types?

[Georg Wrede]

Don Clugston wrote:
> Georg Wrede wrote:
> 
>>> Getting rid of them will release 6 keywords, and make the core 
>>> language simpler.
>>
>>
>> Now, this is the one subject that gets me downright ballistic. During 
>> the (some six) years I've been a part of D, I have constantly had a 
>> problem with this keyword number issue.
> 
> 
>> As a result of this all, I'm definitely of the opinion that "one concept
>> warrants one word", and that "the same word for different purposes is
>> poison", and that "the same concept with different words is poison".
>>
>> (Do I have to say "const", anybody???")
> 
> There's a funny thing about this situation. Here's the background:
> * I argued (on the ng) against overloading the 'enum' keyword to mean 
> manifest constants.
> * Andrei emailed me, basically saying that we need to keep the keyword 
> count down.

This should NEVER be an isolated goal. Rather, it should just be the 
natural result of good language design. And only that.

BASIC and Brainf**k have fewer keywords than D, but I wouldn't call them 
better than D.

> * I responded that if we want to get the keyword count down, an obvious 
> way to do it would be to remove the pure imaginary types.
> * Andrei discussed this with Walter.
> 
> Essentially, I don't think that pure imaginary types belong in the 
> language (not even in a standard library). And getting rid of them would 
> be great news for those who care about keyword count.
> 
> The complex types are different; the _only_ reason you'd remove them is 
> to reduce the keyword count. That's a completely different issue.

Of course, the fewness of keywords can be perceived as a measure of good 
language design. But decreasing the number of keywords artificially 
doesn't make any language better.

"Have as few keywords as practical, but NO fewer than that!"