const

[Jason House]

Sean Kelly wrote:
> This is why I've never understood the argument that a language must have
> as few keywords as it can get away with.  In my experience, having the
> same
> symbol represent multiple concepts tends to cause confusion.  The ideal
> situation is to have a simple syntax so only a few keywords are necessary,
> but barring that, I'd think that choosing an expressive and appropriate
> symbology for each situation would be best.  To me, it seems that the
> "minimize keyword count" idea began as a way to verify conceptual
> simplicity and has since become an arbitrary metric that measures
> nothing.

I couldn't agree more!  keyword minimization is another horrible idea
inherited from the C++ world where backwards compatibility is a major
concern.  (Ok, I'm guessing at that, but it's the only semi-sane argument I
can come up with)

IMHO, new keywords should be used for distinct functionality...  I don't
care if Andrei like it instantly or not!  My only problem with the current
const design is the use of keywords.

The manifest constant thing created a whole new storm about wording choice. 
Eventually, people settled on manifest as the best keyword.  If nothing
else, it forced a coder to go look it up to find what it means!

Back when everyone was trying to understand the new const designs, we all
called const "readonly".  Every time someone asks today, we always describe
it as readonly. Why not use that term if it makes sense to everyone?!