C++ developer choices in open source projects

[via Digitalmars-d]

On Thursday, 30 October 2014 at 20:06:30 UTC, H. S. Teoh via 
Digitalmars-d wrote:
> D had it right by moving all these user-defined literals into 
> strings
> that are parsed at compile-time. Much more powerful than the 
> crippled
> stuff operator""() can accept, and far less dangerous and 
> lightyears
> more maintainable.

I believe there are examples of system software going wrong 
because one library used SI units and another one did not. So 
being able to typecast doubles into something more restricted is 
useful:

3.0_miles vs 3.0_km

Sure you could have done it this way instead:

miles(3.0) vs km(3.0)

But people don't, so providing literals is a good addition for 
C++.

(And no, string processing at compile time is not a good idea! It 
suffers from the same problems as macros.)