@property - take it behind the woodshed and shoot it?

[Jonathan M Davis]

On Thursday, January 24, 2013 13:08:08 Adam Wilson wrote:
> On Thu, 24 Jan 2013 12:58:41 -0800, Andrei Alexandrescu
> 
> <SeeWebsiteForEmail at erdani.org> wrote:
> > On 1/24/13 3:45 PM, Nick Sabalausky wrote:
> >> On Thu, 24 Jan 2013 12:51:32 -0500
> >> Andrei Alexandrescu<SeeWebsiteForEmail at erdani.org> wrote:
> >> No, you merely came up with *some* specific cherry-picked examples that
> >> sparked *some* debate (with most of the disagreing coming from
> >> you).
> > 
> > I simply mentioned three reasons that came to mind.
> > 
> > Andrei
> 
> While I don't approve of Mr. Sabalausky's tone or attitude,

He does have a tendancy to get out of hand in that regard.

> the crux of
> his argument is logically sound. The problem with @property isn't
> @property, it's D's insistence on optional parens. If paren usage was
> clearly defined then this would be a non-issue. I would like to point out
> that I can't think of another systems/general purpose language that has an
> calling syntax specification as vague and convoluted as D's. C#'s is
> brutally simple. Java's is brutally simple. In C/C++ everything is a
> function or field, so, brutally simple.
> 
> Make D's calling syntax simpler, end optional parens!

Exactly. That's what _should_ have happened. We wouldn't have all of these 
problems if we'd just gone with a C#-esque property design and never had 
optional parens. Unfortunately however, optional parens are so popular for at 
least some use cases (e.g. UFCS), that I don't think that there's much chance 
of them going away.

- Jonathan M Davis