Safer casts

[Dee Girl]

Yigal Chripun Wrote:

> <off topic rant>
> What worries me most about D is the fact that D becomes an extension to C++.
> The whole idea behind D was to create a new language without all the
> baggage and backward compatibility issues of C++.
> I don't want a slightly more readable version of C++ since I'll get that
> with C++0x.
> c++ programmers want D to have a D "stl" and a D boost. that's wrong!
> STL is badly designed and employs massive amounts of black magic that
> ordinary people do not understand. (I suffer at work while writing in
> C++). in what world does it make sense to mark an abstract method with
> "=0;" at the end, especially when the method is horizontally long and
> that gets to be off screen!
> D should be written with a D mindset which should be the best
> ingredients extracted from all those languages D got its influences
> from: java, C#, python, ruby, c/c++, etc. Tango is a good example of
> designing such a new D mindset, IMO. Phobos is not, since it's merely C
> code written with D syntax, with all those new shiny code Andrei added
> which is C++ code written with D syntax. I appreciate his great
> expertise in C++, but I already can use C++ libraries in C++ without
> learning a new language. D needs to be better. *much* better.
> </rant>

I want to understand what you said because it can change my decision to use D1 or D2 or not at all. 

>From what I read in Phobos some good examples of interesting D mindset that are hard in C++ or other languages are std.typecons and std.algorithm. There are parts of Phobos that look very ugly. For example the streams.

I used STL and it is useful to me. If it is true for many people then why D not take the good parts of it? If you know of bad designs in STL they could be avoided in D. Also STL has many balck magic but it is because of C++ imperfections. The definition of STL is mathematic very clean.

Why do you mention the =0 sintax? D does not have it. And I do not think this problem is related to STL.

What are good examples that show Tango is a good example of designing with a new D mindset? Thank you. Dee Girl