Rant after trying Rust a bit

[Jonathan M Davis via Digitalmars-d]

On Saturday, 25 July 2015 at 20:35:08 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:
> On 7/25/2015 3:29 AM, Jonathan M Davis wrote:
>> We're essentially using it with ranges already when we're 
>> implementing
>> algorithms differently based on what type of range we're given 
>> or what extra
>> capabilities the range has, so it obviously is showing its 
>> usefulness there,
>
> That's right. We've already been doing it in a haphazard 
> manner, what Andrei is doing is recognizing the technique, 
> naming it, and thinking about how to formalize it, organize it, 
> and determine best practices.
>
> It's like going from an ad-hoc table of function pointers to 
> recognizing that one is doing OOP.

Well, it'll be interesting to see what he comes up with.

>> but the allocators is the only other case that I can think of 
>> at the moment where it
>> would make sense to use it heavily.
>
> Containers are another fairly obvious use case.

Yes. There are definitely places that DbI is going to be huge. I 
just have a hard time coming up with them. So, while I agree that 
it's a fantastic tool, I'm just not convinced yet that it's going 
to be one that's widely applicable. I guess that we'll just have 
to wait and see what Andrei comes up with and where others take 
it from there. But it's definitely something that D can do rather 
easily and most other languages can't do at all, so it's a big 
win for us in that regard, especially if it does turn out to be 
widely applicable.

On a related note, while I'd noticed it on some level, I don't 
think that it had ever clicked for me how restrictive interfaces 
are before this discussion. The simple fact that you can't ask 
for two of them at once really reduces how reusable your code can 
be. So, templatizing those checks rather than using interfaces is 
huge. And DbI is an extension of that. There's likely a lot of 
unplumbed depth there.

- Jonathan M Davis