Does D have too many features?
Timon Gehr
timon.gehr at gmx.ch
Mon Apr 30 17:02:36 PDT 2012
On 05/01/2012 01:20 AM, akaz wrote:
>
> I expected to meet D and exclaim: wow! C++ done right! Instead, I feel
> like being forced to learn another,
Yes, D is its own thing.
> completely new paradigm language,
> like I would start with Lisp or something else.
>
OTOH, this seems to be an exaggeration.
> Remember:
> "Within D, there is a much smaller and cleaner language struggling to
> get out".
>
I don't see the value of that assertion from a pragmatic point of view.
What is to be gained? Note that you have discussed mostly syntax.
* adding -> does not make the language smaller or cleaner and it
complicates generic code for no benefit.
* loosening the syntactic distinction between value and reference type
variable declarations could be done, (to the neat effect that
tail-qualified class references would trivially work) but there
shouldn't be any directly built-in support for treating polymorphic
class instances as values.
* I agree that the @property situation needs to be cleaned up. There
are only five @annotations in total. And what you have said does not
apply to the other four.
* how p[0..len] can be seen as an issue instead of as great completely
escapes my mind.
* I agree on supporting deducing length for static arrays. (there is a
int[$] arr = [1,2,3]; proposal.)
* the syntax for arrays is straightforward and I don't see any
potential for improvement.
* the foo(a,&b) example is biased because it uses a meaningless
function name. From the function name alone it is often *almost*
clear that a certain argument will be modified. & & & spam is not
'clean' either.
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