Why D const is annoying

[Mehrdad]

"Steven Schveighoffer"  wrote in message 
news:op.wdokh6vteav7ka at localhost.localdomain...
> There are two solutions, both are horrible.

That's what scares me lol

> There is a possible 3rd solution.  Don't use immutable/const, instead use 
> information hiding.
> In other words, Your class is already technically "immutable", since name 
> will never mutate beyond the first setting.  This requires coder 
> discipline, and has no help from the compiler.

Yup.

> But many languages that *don't* have const/immutable do well with this 
> pattern (think Java strings).

Java strings are pretty poor for performance though. :\
You shouldn't be forced to choose between O(1) performance (versus O(n)) and 
the correctness of your program.

> I have periodically mulled the idea of making a library-based solution for 
> logical const.  I think it would work, but you would have to be extremely 
> cautious, and you lose some compiler guarantees for it.
> The most difficult part to deal with is how to prevent concurrent access, 
> when an immutable object is always implicitly sharable.

Yeah, 'shared' also suffers from similar limitations...

> I have another idea which gets around the problem in a different way.  I 
> think it's essential to bringing arbitrary ranges in line with current 
> array features.  When I have some time to flesh it out, I'll propose it. I 
> think we absolutely can't be finished with ranges until this is 
> implemented.

Okay nice. I also think this is 100% relevant to the range issue, so I don't 
think we will see a true fix until this problem is solved.