const?? When and why? This is ugly!

[hasen]

I haven't been following D for over a year .. now I notice there's a const!!

In C++, in my experience, the only time I need const is when I pass 
temporary objects by reference and the compiler refuses, so I make the 
parameter const to make the compiler happy.

void my_func( const SomeType& obj ) { ... }

This is annoying because now const propagates like a virus! any function 
that I call on `obj` must also be changed to accept a `const` reference. 
any  method on obj which doesn't change it must also be marked as 
`const` in order for it to be callable from inside this function.

This whole stupid process wouldn't even be needed in the first place if 
C++ had a garbage collector, because then I would always "new" them (as 
per Java, C#, and D)

SomeType *obj = new SomeType();

but because there's no garbage collector, I have to create the object 
not as a reference.

SomeType obj();

Again, this is all stupid C++ stuff that shouldn't even be needed in the 
first place.

However, with all that being said, that's just my opinion, maybe over 
the time some people found some actually useful uses for const, great, 
so they can use it if they want.

What really annoys me is the viral nature of const.

Yesterday I was reading this: http://www.digitalmars.com/d/2.0/const3.html

(btw, this page is empty: http://www.digitalmars.com/d/2.0/const.html )

and, to my surprise, I see:

char[] p = "world"; // error, cannot implicitly convert invariant
		    // to mutable


and all I can think of is: WHAT - THE - HELL??!!!!!!

invariant(char)[] is ugly! might as well be saying std::vector<char> 
(ok, not the best example of stupidity, but I hope you get my point).
(and, is invariant(char)[] the correct type? or must it be 
invariant(char)[5]??)

This is not the D that I loved. What's going on?

P.S. look here 
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/557011/d-programming-language-char-arrays/

I know you can use "auto" and all that, but still .. I don't feel good 
about this.