Can you do this in D?

[Walter Bright]

On 7/26/2012 6:18 PM, Wes wrote:
> 1. It has *practically forces use of the GC, since turning it off means I can't
> use many features of the language. This isn't as big of a deal to me as it is to
> many C++ devs (my assumption). A GC gives the impression of slow managed, even
> if the language isn't scripted/bytecode.

C++ doesn't have features that would require a GC - not using the GC in D does 
not mean the language is crippled to be less than C++.


> 2. It doesn't have ways of introducing new syntax (e.g. $, @, # operators or
> different variable attributes like myconst).
> I don't see this as a major flaw as I don't know of any other language other
> than scheme/lisp/ratchet that allow this.

We've explicitly decided not to do user defined syntax.


> 3. It can't run *all* forms of code at compile time.
>
> 4. It doesn't have a simple prettyprint operator. I think .stringof is a big
> step forward from .ToString() for simplicity, but obviously $variable would be
> more terse.
>
> 5. It doesn't have a way to iterate over every id in scope.
> I can't think of a good reason to do this anyway.

We try not to add features just because we can - we try to do ones only if they 
have compelling use cases.