proposed @noreturn attribute

[Nicholas Wilson via Digitalmars-d]

On Monday, 17 July 2017 at 18:54:37 UTC, H. S. Teoh wrote:
> IMO, the observations "used rarely" and "attention-seeking 
> notation" are better satisfied by an attribute named @noreturn 
> than some strange, convoluted, arcane invocation like 
> `typeof(assert(0))`.  Because:
>
> (1) "used rarely" means it should be as non-intrusive as 
> possible as far as the language is concerned -- we should not 
> spend a lot of language real estate on something that's rarely 
> used, nor should it be something complicated to implement, 
> and/or introduces tricky corner cases that we're likely to get 
> wrong on first attempt. A @noreturn attribute is non-intrusive 
> -- doesn't interact with anything else in the language, easy to 
> implement -- has no tricky corner cases.
>
> (2) "attention-seeking": an arcane invocation like 
> `typeof(assert(0))` is harder to parse and therefore more 
> likely to invite people to just gloss over it as 
> "incomprehensible gibberish that I'll just ignore unless I have 
> to look further", than catch people's attention.  Whereas an 
> annotation like `@noreturn` is immediately obvious by its very 
> presence, with a name that instantly tells you what it does 
> while it still holds your attention.
>
> I see `typeof(assert(0))` as the same kind of over-engineering 
> of
> something trivially solved and relatively unimportant ("rarely 
> used")
> that has unfortunately plagued C++ design and led C++ to become 
> the mess
> it is today.  It's sad to see D start down the same path...
>
>
> T

(3) LDC and GDC already have an implementation in the form of an 
attribute so we can just have an AliasSeq of the front end 
recognised attribute and the one for GDC and LDC (assuming my 
attributes DIP goes through).