Can non-nullable references be implemented as a library?

retard re at tard.com.invalid
Sun Nov 7 14:48:33 PST 2010


Sun, 07 Nov 2010 17:06:12 -0500, bearophile wrote:

> retard:
> 
>> There are these DIPs in wiki4d. Were they useful? At least it seems
>> that this thread is leading nowhere. Half of the people don't know what
>> non- nullable means. It's hard to trust this process when it seems to
>> go nowhere. No one wants to validate the design decisions.
> 
> If a language feature is too much complex to understand&design for the
> community of people that use the language, then it may be better to not
> add that feature to the language. Maybe nonnullabile types are too much
> complex to design for D. Even D2 immutability and D1 type system seem
> borderline to the max complexity of things that may be added to D. The
> design of the module system and immutability have some important holes
> still.

I bet even the basic class/interface/exception system of D is too complex 
to explain for some members of the audience. You can't assume that the 
same people who *use* the language can/want to understand the 
implementation of the features. Of course it's benefical to understand 
how everything works, but in some practical tasks 1) you write some high 
level code 2) compile it 3) analyze the output (the generated binary) and 
4) perhaps hand optimize some parts. You don't need to understand what 
the compiler actually did in all phases.


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