Three Unlikely Successful Features of D

[Jonathan M Davis]

On Tuesday, March 20, 2012 14:02:15 Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
> I plan to give a talk at Lang.NEXT
> (http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/Lang-NEXT/Lang-NEXT-2012) with the
> subject above. There are a few features of D that turned out to be
> successful, in spite of them being seemingly unimportant or diverging
> from related consecrated approaches.
> 
> What are your faves? I have a few in mind, but wouldn't want to
> influence answers.

I'd probably list

1. auto
2. static if
3. template constraints

But slices is also a good one. Thread-local by default is also one that could 
be listed, but I'm not sure that that's really "unlikely." Its benefits are 
quite obvious with little explanation. The only question is how well it works 
when trying to actually share data and communicate between threads, which is 
an area where we still need work (e.g. finishing implementing shared).

- Jonathan M Davis