Scott Meyers wants to bring default zero-initialization to C++, mentions TDPL for precedent

[deadalnix via Digitalmars-d]

On Saturday, 21 November 2015 at 13:28:20 UTC, Joakim wrote:
> Not proud, I've argued in this forum in the past that scripting 
> languages have an audience that D is unlikely to make much of 
> an inroads into.  They simply optimize programmer convenience 
> over efficiency and that's an acceptable tradeoff in certain 
> niches.  However, even in that market, there are badly-designed 
> languages that do unreasonably well.
>
> Not interested in an argument here, so I'll end with a 
> constructive question: what do you believe D "should learn from 
> [PHP/JS] rather than dismissing it?"

Well the first lesson would be in your comment already. A badly 
designed languages that get what matter to some user right will 
do unreasonably well.

By extension I'd say that the ecosystem matter as much, if not 
more than the language itself.

That getting something really right can excuse a lot of crap. 
Think iPhone 1, the smartphone that don't do 3G nor send MMS. 
Sounds like a joke doesn't it ? Yet thi is how the second biggest 
mobile platform started with.

On a more meta level, when something succeed at a very large 
scale, while having aspect of it that smell bad. Believe me I can 
tell you a lot about how bad PHP is, as well as most people at 
Facebook could. This language is fucked beyond repair in many 
ways. But, that only makes it more interesting, because that 
means there is something in there that is non obvious and that 
most alternatives missed.

Rather than having an aristocratic attitude toward these 
languages that we perceive as badly designed, we should be really 
asking ourselves the question "what did they get right ? Can we 
get it right too ?". Because we have signal here, that is telling 
us this thing really matter.