Project Elvis

[Jonathan M Davis]

On Friday, November 10, 2017 11:39:48 codephantom via Digitalmars-d wrote:
> On Friday, 10 November 2017 at 10:51:28 UTC, Jonathan M Davis
>
> wrote:
> > Shooting down an idea just because it comes from Microsoft (or
> > any other company) rather than judging it on its technical
> > merits is just bad policy. Ideas should be judged based on
> > their own merit, not simply on where they came from.
> >
> >
> > - Jonathan M Davis
>
> Can I remind you, of one of your great contribtions to this
> discussion:
>
> "So, I really don't think that there's any point in adding the
> Elvis operator, but there are some folks here who seem to think
> that it's a great loss that we don't have it, because they're
> used to writing stuff like that in languages like C#, which do
> way more with classes and null than D code typically does."
>
> Any then you have a go at me, for saying we shouldn't be looking
> to C#?
>
> Wow!

I "had a go at you," because it seemed like you were bashing on Adam for
suggesting that we look at what C# had done and what research Microsoft had
done simply because it was Microsoft that had done it. You have been bashing
on Microsoft in so many posts that there's no way that I'm going to be able
to tell when you're trying to make a joke and when you're simply making fun
of Microsoft and putting down information or an idea because it came from
Microsoft.

I don't think that the elvis operator and its ilk should be added to D,
because I don't think that D is in the same position as C# (and as such,
it's not useful in D in the same way), and I think that code that's written
to use null in a way that would make heavy use of such operators desirable
is code that is going about things in a bad way. Sometimes, it makes a lot
of sense for a reference or pointer to be null (especially when it's
declared), but I'm very much against code where many references or pointers
in the program would be null without it being a bug. I think that that's
just begging for bugs related to null.

However, I see no problem with someone presenting information from Microsoft
about C# and why they did what they did with their operators. That doesn't
mean that I think that we should do what they did, but it's perfectly valid
information to be used in support of getting new operators in D if that's
what the person posting wants. And even if we don't want to take the same
path in D, it can still better inform our decisions.

- Jonathan M Davis