yank unary '+'?

Mike Parker aldacron at gmail.com
Tue Dec 8 04:56:03 PST 2009


retard wrote:
> Tue, 08 Dec 2009 12:08:43 +0900, Mike Parker wrote:
> 
>> retard wrote:
>>> Mon, 07 Dec 2009 04:06:14 -0500, Michiel Helvensteijn wrote:
>>>
>>>> Andrei Alexandrescu Wrote:
>>>>
>>>>>> What will removing it gain you?
>>>>> Sancta simplicitas.
>>>> Hm.. I don't really buy that argument.
>>>>
>>>> I see you and Walter removing/witholding things (incomparability
>>>> operators, logical operator overloading) from the language, because:
>>>> "I can't imagine a use for it and removing it makes the language
>>>> simpler."
>>>>
>>>> Meanwhile, you're keeping C syntax for function-pointers around, and
>>>> I'm missing syntactic sugar for my tribool.
>>> You probably don't want to anger millions of users coming from the C
>>> community, do you?
>> While we're at it, lets avoid angering the millions of users coming from
>> the Java community. And the Python community. And the PHP community. And
>> the...
> 
> That's just silly. D has its C roots. Python and PHP are rivaling amateur 
> languages. A scripting language user wouldn't use D, but all C users 
> should switch to D because the execution model is similar and C is 
> basically a subset of D.

My point is that there's no reason to cater to any one particular group 
of programmers. We all have to learn new syntax when moving between 
languages, and we all have different backgrounds. There are numerous 
members of the D community with plenty of Java, but little or no C, 
experience. C syntax doesn't help them one bit.

D is *not* C, no matter its roots. And D2 is farther from C than D1. 
There's no reason to keep around an alternative C syntax for a 
particular feature (like function pointers) when everyone recommends the 
/D style/ syntax be preferred. I think C programmers are smart enough to 
figure things out without the language keeping around old syntax. If 
they want C, they can stick with C.



More information about the Digitalmars-d mailing list