Signed word lengths and indexes

[Simen kjaeraas]

Walter Bright <newshound1 at digitalmars.com> wrote:
> bearophile wrote:
>> Don:
>>
>>> Indeed, only a subset of D is useful for low-level development.<
>>  A problem is that some of those D features (that are often useful in
>> application code) are actively negative for that kind of development.
>>
>>> But D has more close-to-the-metal features than C does.<
>>  I don't know if those extra D features are enough.
>
> Since it has more than C does, and C is used for kernel dev, then it  
> must be enough.

I believe the point of Linus (and probably bearophile) was not that C++
lacked features, but rather it lets programmers confuse one another by
having features that are not as straight-forward as C. D also has these.


> One example of this is transitive immutability. Nobody asked for it. A  
> lot of people question the need for it. I happen to believe that it  
> offers a quantum improvement in the ability of a programmer to manage  
> the complexity of a large program, which is why I (and Andrei) have  
> invested so much effort in it, and are willing to endure flak over it.  
> The payoff won't be clear for years, but I think it'll be large.

I still have problems understanding how someone could come up with the
idea of non-transitive const. I remember the reaction when I read about
it being such a great thing on this newsgroup, and going "wtf? Why on
earth would it not be transitive? That would be useless!" (yes, I was
not a very experienced programmer).

-- 
Simen