Program size, linking matter, and static this()

[Sean Kelly]

On Dec 16, 2011, at 12:44 PM, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
> 
> Consider scope. Many arguments applicable to application code are not quite fit for the standard library. The stdlib is the connection between the compiler innards, the runtime innards, and the OS innards all meet, and the role of the stdlib is to provide nice abstractions to client code. Inside the stdlib it's entirely expected to find things like __traits most nobody heard of, casts, and other things that would be normally shunned in application code. I'd be more worried if there was no possibility to do what we need to do. The standard library is not a place to play it nice. We can't afford to say "well yeah everyone's binary is bloated and slower to start but we didn't like the cast that would have taken care of that".

I think this is a reasonable assertion about druntime, but the standard library itself should require very little black magic, though the use of obscure features (like __traits) could be commonplace.