The stately := operator feature proposal

[Jonathan M Davis]

On Thursday, May 30, 2013 22:27:35 js.mdnq wrote:
> With that attitude one would never be able to achieve anything
> complex. The goal is not to reduce complexity but to find an
> elegant way to deal with the complexity.

Sure, but what you're talking about is pure syntactic sugar that saves a few 
characters and that's it. And in the process, it makes it so that there's now 
another way to do something that has to be explained to people, and then we'll 
have debates over whether auto or := is better, and it's one more thing that 
we're all going to have to deal with, even if it's relatively minor. And it 
adds _zero_ functionality. It would be one thing if we were talking about a 
fetaure that actually had an objective benefit, but the benefits of this one are 
purely subjective, and it does exactly the same thing as an existing feature.

> I think the issue is that some people think that because they
> won't use it or don't need it that it surely won't benefit anyone
> else(so why go through the extra "complexity" to have a
> feature)... it's a pretty common attitude and somewhat
> egotistical.

Except that if other people use it, you have to deal with it even if you never 
use it. The idea that adding a feature to the language which only a subset of 
the users will use will not affect all users is just plain false.

- Jonathan M Davis