Which D features to emphasize for academic review article

[Era Scarecrow]

On Saturday, 11 August 2012 at 09:26:42 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:
> On 8/11/2012 1:30 AM, Era Scarecrow wrote:

>> The compiler could always have flags specifying if variables 
>> were used, and if they are false they are as good as NaN. Only 
>> downside is a performance hit unless you Mark it as a release 
>> binary. It really comes down to if it's worth implementing or 
>> considered a big change (unless it's a flag you have to 
>> specially turn on)
>
> Not so easy. Suppose you pass a pointer to the variable to 
> another function. Does that function set it?

  I suppose there could be a second hidden pointer/bool as part of 
calls, but then it's completely incompatible with any C calling 
convention, meaning that is probably out of the question.

  Either a) pointers are low level enough that like casting; At 
which case it's all up to the programmer. or b) same as before 
that unless it's an 'out' parameter is specified, it would likely 
throw an exception at that point, (Since attempting to read/pass 
the address of an uninitialized variable is the same as accessing 
it directly). Afterall having a false positive is better than not 
being involved at all right?

  Of course with that in mind, specifying a variable to begin as 
void (uninitialized) could be it's own form of initialization? 
(Meaning it wouldn't be checking those even though they hold 
known garbage)