Tuple unpacking syntax [Was: Re: Multiple return values...]

[foobar]

On Wednesday, 14 March 2012 at 13:17:47 UTC, Robert Jacques wrote:
<snip>
> But there's a reason we use /// instead of ⫻; we shouldn't 
> require custom keyboard mappings in order to program 
> efficiently in D.

Aren't we supposed to be moving towards more natural interfaces 
in computing? I'm sure that once the touch interface is perfected 
for text input it would be trivial to have a "coding keyboard" or 
a "D keyboard". The keyboard mappings would simply come bundled 
with the compiler.

The current text based programming is quite limiting considering 
that we actually deal with a tree of tokens. IDEs already 
manipulate code at the AST level in order to enable refactoring. 
The next logical step would be to eliminate the text form all 
together and store code at the AST level, thus avoiding 
lexing/parsing overhead and the limits of text based 
representation.

e.g. subtextual.org has cool ideas how to design such a future 
non textual language. For example, representing Boolean logic in 
a table instead of arbitrary nested if statements.