Slides from my ACCU Silicon Valley talk

[Andrei Alexandrescu]

On 12/13/10 8:30 PM, retard wrote:
> Tue, 14 Dec 2010 02:56:45 +0100, Andrej Mitrovic wrote:
>
>> Why do /you/ take it personally?
>
> You've misunderstood. I only wish the discussion was a bit more technical
> and had less to do with opinions and hype. The reason is, a more
> technical approach might solve technical problems in more efficient way.
> But my goal is not to belittle social issues wrt language adoption.
> Surely I understand reddit isn't lambda-the-ultimate.org and I'm glad
> that the Go trolls didn't find the thread (yet). I just find this
> behavior incomprehensible.

Well a reddit discussion is a reddit discussion opened to all flaws of 
reddit's voting system. No need to get annoyed over it.

I enjoy reading snc_kid's posts, clearly knows the book. If anything I'd 
want snc_kid to hang out more around here and provide good criticism. 
Generally I'd much wish D's naysayers were simply of better quality; the 
likes of iLiekCaeks and eternium are just not all that competent.

> My personal stance on this matter is that I believe a more consistent and
> flexible mechanism for operators would fit D.

That would be interesting. In the best-case scenario, what do you think 
would be the positive impact of the flexible operators, as you envision 
them, on the language?

> I'm also a bit more of a
> fan of C++0x concepts than those contraints shown in the slides. I
> haven't really thought how it all would work out, but if the atmosphere
> was more ambitious to this direction, I could participate more. But it
> seems my vision conflicts badly with what D2 has become.

In all honesty, it is difficult to infer your vision from the trail of 
your posts.

As of C++ concepts, let me mention a few facts fresh from the source (I 
literally collected them an hour ago). C++ concepts are dead, buried, 
and decomposing. Nobody is working on them and there is exactly one guy 
in the world still talking about them. For a variety of theoretical and 
practical purposes, they will never make it in C++.

D's constrained templates were introduced on 17 June 2008 and they've 
been a smashing hit. Virtually all of Phobos uses them, and I'm sure a 
lot of generic client code. They take half a minute to explain and solve 
a difficult problem in a very simple manner.

I'm not saying you can't convince that C++-style concepts would be 
superior. I'm saying you'll need to bring some solid evidence to the 
table. If you don't, please don't claim you're being ostracized :o).


Andrei