An inconvenient truth

[Alexander Pánek]

Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
> KennyTM~ wrote:
>> Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
>>> Dave wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>> Anyhow, this segment of the discussion is somewhat orthogonal to 
>>>>> the rest of it as I think we all agree a Unicode notation will be 
>>>>> an alternative, not an exclusive choice for template instantiations.
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Alternative? That's really what we need; a different group of 
>>>> symbols that denote exactly the same thing, in Unicode no less <g>
>>>>
>>>> This whole discussion is getting goofy.
>>>>
>>>> Imagine a code maintainer who has a hard enough time grasping what 
>>>> the template code is doing, much less having to slog through code 
>>>> where the original developer(s) decided to use the Unicode 
>>>> "alternative" depending on what day of the week it was.
>>>>
>>>> Beautiful!
>>>>
>>>> Let's all step back for a second here, and then just grant that 
>>>> Walter's original idea is good enough and move on to more important 
>>>> issues.
>>>>
>>>> It took me all of, oh, 5 seconds to look at some D template examples 
>>>> to figure out what was going on and start emulating it with a "Hello 
>>>> D Template World" of my own for a little practice. So I think the 
>>>> notion that new users are going to eschew D or D templates based on 
>>>> the !() syntax is just plain wrong, especially since somehow the 
>>>> discussion has now changed to a Unicode Alternative (which, BTW, 
>>>> would only make it harder on new users).
>>>
>>> You'd be amazed. I personally know two guys - awesome hackers - who 
>>> wouldn't touch Eiffel in part because it introduces comments with 
>>> "--". Not only that, but for one of them that was all the example he 
>>> had to get to never even look at Eiffel. In fact I think this 
>>> anecdote will start the introduction of TDPL. I think it's very 
>>> instructive with regard to how much people care about syntax, and in 
>>> what arbitrary ways.
>>>
>>> Andrei
>>
>> Why no one says this when “enum foo = 1;” was introduced. -__-"
> 
> Use of fancy quotes noted :o).

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