D's greatest mistakes

[Steven Schveighoffer]

On Tue, 30 Nov 2010 13:46:31 -0500, Jonathan M Davis <jmdavisProg at gmx.com>  
wrote:

> Personally, I think that an in-language solution would definitely be  
> better and
> more in line with other language features than trying to fix the issue  
> in a
> library. This really does look like a core language issue which we  
> couldn't
> solve properly, so we created a bandaid in the standard library to solve  
> it.
>
> The problem is that the feature has to be properly designed and that  
> someone has
> to take the time to actually implement it. And at this point, even if we  
> have a
> perfect solution for it, Walter is sick of the whole issue and not at all
> interested in implementing it. Someone else would need to step up to the  
> plate
> on this one, and we don't exactly have an abundance of dmd developers.  
> It seems
> like no one has both the inclination and the time to do it.
>
> I'd _love_ to see proper tail const as a language feature, and that's  
> where I
> think that it should be, but it really doesn't look like that's going to  
> happen
> at this point.

I agree with all this except the last phrase.  I think someone will  
eventually do it, but it probably won't be Walter.  It's such a blatant  
omission that someone who has an itch, and good compiler-writing skills  
will just do it and stick it in a patch.

-Steve