Can non-nullable references be implemented as a library?

[Andrei Alexandrescu]

On 11/7/10 1:54 PM, retard wrote:
> Sun, 07 Nov 2010 19:39:09 +0200, so wrote:
>
>>> Andrei's stance is, either a library addon or ship D without that
>>> feature. D's library already contains both tuples and algebraic data
>>> types. They're simple to use, almost like in Python. The reason for
>>> library addons isn't that builtin features make less sense, the reason
>>> is that TDPL is already out and we can't improve the language in any
>>> radical way.
>>
>> Lets talk about solution in this thread more than politics, politics
>> "never" improve anything.
>
> There was this other thread here -- "why a part of d community do not
> want to go to d2?"
>
> One reason is, there's no good process for handling these feature
> proposals. Walter attends useless bikeshed discussions and spreads
> misinformation about things he doesn't get, Andrei has excellent
> knowledge of languages but he often prefers staying in the background.
>
> 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.

In all honesty, the distribution of those who don't understand non-null 
is about equal across the proponents and the opponents :o).

> It's hard to trust this process when it seems to go
> nowhere. No one wants to validate the design decisions.

This thread does have a good outcome: Walter will at least consider 
improving flow analysis in constructors to support @disable'd default 
constructors. That is the key improvement that allows NonNull as a library.


Andrei