Dealing with Autodecode

[Andrei Alexandrescu via Digitalmars-d]

On 06/02/2016 11:03 AM, H. S. Teoh via Digitalmars-d wrote:
> On Thu, Jun 02, 2016 at 02:44:21PM +0000, deadalnix via Digitalmars-d wrote:
>> On Thursday, 2 June 2016 at 14:29:28 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
>>>> It's one thing to make a mistake. Everyone does that sometimes,
>>>> and nobody is born knowing complex issues. What matters is if
>>>> you're willing to learn new information and correct your errors.
>>>
>>> The real ticket out of this is RCStr. It solves a major problem in
>>> the language (compulsive GC) and also a minor occasional annoyance
>>> (autodecoding).
>>>
>>
>> You start to sound like a car salesman. I know nothing about RCStr,
>> but I'm already starting to resent it.
>
> Same here. It's starting to sound like some unproven newfangled
> contraption designed to please the GC-phobic crowd who believe that RC
> is the answer to life, the universe, and everything, and who may not
> actually adopt D even after we've broken our backs bending over
> backwards for them.

I'm sorry, this is completely ridiculous. What is unproven? Reference 
counting is a long-standing success story for string handling. I'm using 
it because it's good, not to woo users.

> (And with a subject like "our sister", this RCStr
> business does not sound very appealing at all.)

I'm glad this is mentioned as one of the issues with RCStr.

> Whatever happened to
> improving *current* string handling for *current* users?

RCStr will improve string handling for current users.

> It's making forking Phobos look like a less distant possibility than I
> had anticipated. :-(

So you'd fork Phobos because... it adds a good string type?


Andrei