D's greatest mistakes

[Bruno Medeiros]

On 30/11/2010 20:47, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
>
> Same discussion goes about non-nullable. We don't need the compiler to
> understand non-nullable types, we need to imbue the compiler with the
> ability to enforce arbitrary user-defined state invariants, non-null
> being one of them.
>

That would be great. That would be *really* great. There are lots of 
useful invariants one might want to express. (something like Java's 
wildcards for containers, or numeric ranges, maybe ownership 
relationships, etc.)

However, just as it would be very useful, wouldn't it be an incredibly 
compex feature set to implement, at least in a sufficiently generic and 
useful way? Complex enough for it to be something that could not be 
worked in anytime soon?

Because the impression I get from Steven and others, is that this issue 
is quite critical, and makes writing D code unpleasant in many 
situations (I myself can't agree or disagree, haven't used D2 enough in 
pratice, but their arguments and experience seem convincing)

-- 
Bruno Medeiros - Software Engineer