DIP64: Attribute Cleanup

[Jonathan M Davis via Digitalmars-d]

On Monday, April 18, 2016 13:10:59 jmh530 via Digitalmars-d wrote:
> On Monday, 18 April 2016 at 12:11:46 UTC, Jonathan M Davis wrote:
> > Regardless, changing any of the attributes now would break a
> > _lot_ of code, and such a change would have to be worth the
> > pain that it would cause, which is questinonable.
>
> dfix has a DIP64 switch, right?

Yes, because the person who created DIP64 created dfix. But there is no
consensus that DIP64 should be adopted, and based on how Walter has
typically responded to changes that will break code, I very much doubt that
having dfix make the change easy would be sufficient for him to decide that
the code breakage that would result from changing the attributes would be
acceptable.

Honestly, I think that DIP64 is a poster boy for unnecessary churn. Sure, in
theory, it would be nice to make the attributes more consistent, but
ultimately, it's yet another case of renaming stuff without actually adding
or otherwise changing functionality. We got enough screaming when we made
changes like that 5 years ago even though they did make Phobos more
consistent. And a _lot_ more code has been written since then. So, that much
more code will be affected by such a change whether the change is
theoretically desirable or not. And while having a tool to make the change
relatively easy definitely helps, it doesn't eliminate the cost of the
change. It just reduces it. Personally, I think that we're well past the
point where doing renaming like this is worth it - especially with the
language itself.

- Jonathan M Davis