Remove complex and imaginary types?

[Don Clugston]

Georg Wrede wrote:
> 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.

I agree completely. It's the typical problem you get with any indirect metric.
Keyword count can be a measure of language complexity, but you can fall into the 
horrible trap of making the language more complicated in order to reduce the 
number of keywords.
It becomes a useless metric if you start to optimise for it.

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