D-etractions A real world programmers view on D

SomeDude lovelydear at mailmetrash.com
Mon Aug 27 16:13:53 PDT 2012


On Saturday, 25 August 2012 at 22:40:56 UTC, Nick Sabalausky 
wrote:
> On Sat, 25 Aug 2012 22:36:08 +0200
> "SomeDude" <lovelydear at mailmetrash.com> wrote:
>
>> On Saturday, 25 August 2012 at 00:20:57 UTC, Timon Gehr wrote:
>> > On 08/25/2012 01:58 AM, Pragma Tix wrote:
>> >> ----was Andrew McKinlay is trying D for Suneido.
>> >>
>> >> http://thesoftwarelife.blogspot.fr/2012/08/d-etractions.html
>> >>
>> >> You do not necessarily have to agree with Andrew, but this 
>> >> is a
>> >> pragmatic developer's view.  Let me say that Andrew has 
>> >> created his own
>> >> database system (Relational Algebra based) , his own 
>> >> language (Ruby
>> >> like)  and his own application frame work. Finally he is 
>> >> using his Tools
>> >> to create real world software.. i.e. Trucking/Transport / 
>> >> Accounting etc.
>> >>
>> >> IMO a voice, D core developers should listen to.
>> >>
>> >> Bjoern
>> >
>> > His post comes down to: "I like to have an IDE and I prefer 
>> > Java
>> > because I already know Java."
>> > This is perfectly fine of course, but why would this be 
>> > relevant for D
>> > development?
>> 
>> No, he points out that 1) templates inherently complexify code 
>> 2) make refactoring difficult, especially automated 
>> refactoring, something that is supported by major modern IDEs 
>> and not by text editors like vim/emacs, because the former 
>> have some knowledge of the AST, not the latter.
>> I know the first point is debatable; maybe there is less need 
>> for refactoring as the language is more expressive, but when 
>> refactoring is needed, it's probably much more difficult than 
>> in Java/C#, especially without the help of tools.
>
> FWIW: Personally, I would argue that (as nice as automated 
> refactoring
> admittedly is) putting up with a simplistic less expressive 
> language for
> the sake of niceties like (perfect) automated refactoring is 
> putting the
> cart before the horse. It'd be like putting up with starvation 
> because
> you can't find a salad marked "organic". Having automated 
> refactoring be
> less-than-perfect is a price, yes, but it's a very small price 
> to pay
> for the much bigger savings you get from having powerful
> metaprogramming.
>
> Plus, certain non-automatic refactorings would be a much bigger 
> pain in
> something like Java anyway because of, for example, the lack of 
> type
> inference and the increased need for code to be non-generic in 
> the first
> place.
>
> My $0.02, anyway.

I mostly agree, although some basic refactoring like a simple 
renaming is also very handy.


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