static arrays becoming value types

[Bill Baxter]

On Wed, Oct 21, 2009 at 8:48 AM, Andrei Alexandrescu
<SeeWebsiteForEmail at erdani.org> wrote:
> language_fan wrote:
>>
>> Wed, 21 Oct 2009 11:07:29 -0400, Robert Jacques thusly wrote:
>>>
>>> My issue was that all your example _showed_ was nominal typing. Though I
>>> didn't mention it by name, I did mention that if SOL tuples had
>>> structural typing, it might would be a different story. (Well, until/if
>>> opImplicitCast was implemented, as it would allow for structural
>>> typing.)
>>
>> Why do you insist on using nominal typing for tuples and the library
>> defined "literal". If I want plain old tuples without any kind of type name,
>> why should I care about extra hand waving needed to make it work.
>
> I'm late in this dialog, but I'm not seeing an impediment here. What does it
> matter to you that tuples actually have a name vs. not having a name at all?
>
>> I see opImplicitCast, introspection done with templates and all kinds of
>> other voodoo to be ugly hacks. This is nothing more than one of the basic
>> value types without any special semantics, for $deity's sake. If you like
>> the hacky approach so much, why don't all built-in types (like static arrays
>> etc.) use the same method? Implementation wise tuples are much simpler than
>> D's arrays or AAs, still they are treated like some 2nd class citizen from
>> some notorious 3rd world country.
>
> How and why are they treated badly?
>
>> Why is it so damn hard to change the 90% correctly implemented built-in
>> tuples to work like in any other tuple supporting language. Do you somehow
>> fancy verbose syntax for C++ compatibility reasons (ah, the good old
>> std::tr1::make_tuple<int, int>, makes me want to wank every time..) Try
>> Ruby, try python, try *ML etc. They all somehow got it right.
>
> What exactly didn't D's tuples get right?

Well, auto-flattening is a colossally bad idea to be sure.

--bb