AA literals/initialisation

[Jakob Ovrum]

On Sunday, 12 January 2014 at 11:32:00 UTC, Daniel Murphy wrote:
> It's not _that_ bad.  There are open pull requests to convert 
> AAs to use UFCS instead of the current broken hacks, and 
> crossing from compile to run-time just means matching the 
> layout of the runtime AAs in AssocArrayExpression::toDt.

Alright, that looks more short-term viable than Stepanov's 
approach. I don't think I'm overplaying the issue though - it is 
a tall order to ask for compile-time construction of AAs that are 
then usable at runtime, and it's not fair to present them as a 
fundamental feature, or their absence as a bug, because it's not 
like other languages have anything near this kind of power.

It props up quite often but it's usually due to a (perfectly 
understandable) misunderstanding of D's initializers for fields 
and module-level/static variables. The expectation is that it 
works like in Java and C#, where these initializers are run 
before main or on construction of the type. Fortunately, when the 
D approach is explained, thus explaining why the code errors[1], 
most people tend to be either content or excited.

[1] The error message was fine for D1, but the phrasing is 
problematic for D2...