Reddit: why aren't people using D?

[Nick Sabalausky]

"Walter Bright" <newshound1 at digitalmars.com> wrote in message 
news:h4d9jt$1hq5$1 at digitalmars.com...
> Steven Schveighoffer wrote:
>> On Fri, 24 Jul 2009 14:10:59 -0400, Walter Bright 
>> <newshound1 at digitalmars.com> wrote:
>>> That's my problem with properties as a distinct syntax - they don't have 
>>> distinct uses or behaviors.
>>
>> If you delineate what can be called how, then you elminate syntax 
>> ambiguities from occurring, and eliminate bizarro cases of syntax.  The 
>> difficulty is that the "human meaning" of a property is different than 
>> the human meaning of a function.  To the compiler, they're all functions, 
>> so you as the compiler writer aren't seeing that they are different.  I 
>> think we all agree that writefln = "hi"; makes absolutely no sense to a 
>> person.  But it makes complete sense to the compiler, because it has no 
>> idea what the word "writefln" means to a person.
>
> But when I suggest a restriction on properties, I get complaints that 
> someone might want to have them do what functions do. So I fail to see 
> what rule distinguishes them from functions, even for people.
>

I'm not sure what restriction you're talking about, but here's the 
difference:

Function: Abstracted to a Verb ("write" "sort" "play" "decompress")

Property: Abstracted to a Noun/Adjective ("position" "width" "color" 
"turret" "ball")

Variable: *Special case of Property*, where the *underlying storage* is 
never lazy at all and is always exactly the same as what's presented to the 
class's user.


Here's another (psuedocode) way to describe the difference:

Thing2D ball1, ball2;

ball1.moveTo( [10, 7] ); // Function
ball1.position = [10, 7]; // Property

ball1.moveTo = [10, 7]; // Meaningless bullshit
ball1.position( [10, 7] ); // Meaningless bullshit

ball1.moveTo(ball2.position); // Sensible
ball1.position = ball2.position; // Sensible

ball1.moveTo(ball2.moveTo); // Meaningless bullshit
ball1.position = ball2.moveTo; // Meaningless bullshit

>
>> It's the exact same reason + is not the concatenation operator. 
>> Semantically, making + concatenate two strings together would be 
>> completely unambiguous from adding two integers together because strings 
>> do not define addition, and integers do not define concatenation.  From 
>> your own documentation, someone seeing "10" + 3 might think that he would 
>> get 13 or "103".  Even if the compiler defines what "should" happen, and 
>> the rules are unambiguous, it looks incorrect to the user.
>
> Using + for concatenation is syntactically ambiguous with vector addition.

Are you saying that were it not for vector operations you would have used + 
for concatenation? If not, then you're dodging the point Steven is making.