Which language futures make D overcompicated?

[Seb]

On Friday, 9 February 2018 at 18:21:55 UTC, Bo wrote:
> Here are a few more "basics" that are unneeded or confusing. 
> Lets not even talk about the more advanced features like inout, 
> ...
>
> /-/
>
> * auto: Static typed language yet we fall back on the compiler 
> to figure out what is being assigned. Can just as well have a 
> interpreter language. It only encourages lazy writing and has a 
> penalty on the compilation.

There's almost zero/no penalty on the compilation cost.
What's wrong with letting the compiler help you?
If you don't like auto, simply don't use it :O

> /-/
>
> * to!string, to!... requires "import std.conv"
> * basic string manipulation requires "import std.string"
> * join, replace, replaceInPlace, split, empty all require 
> std.array
> * ...
>
> ... these are basic language features, yet its required to 
> included each of those libraries to every file you need it. A 
> lot of languages have basic functions as standard or 
> dynamically include the required code upon compilation ( or 
> error if you have a double naming ). The time saved on auto 
> compilation, can be reused to do the above mentioned. Two birds 
> with one move.

We're getting there: https://github.com/dlang/phobos/pull/5916

> /-/
>
> * splitLines vs split .. std.array vs std.string
>
> It confuses people because split is part of std.array but 
> splitLines is part of std.string. Really! Most languages simply 
> have split as a basic language feature and you indicate what 
> you want to split.
>
> Its not the only confusing or double function that is present 
> in the standard library.

I assume you aren't aware of the superior splitter in 
std.algorithm?

tl;dr: split has been there before, but it's: `splitter.array`
However, we can't remove these things without breaking code.
We can only improve the documentation and tutorials, to which you 
are more than cordially invited.

> /-/
>
> * scope() .. just call it "defer" just as every other language 
> now does. It only confuses people who come from other 
> languages. Its now almost a standard. By using scope people 
> have have no clue that D has a defer. Took even me a while to 
> know that D had a defer system in place.

1) I only know about defer in Go. That's not a standard.

2) How do you do scope(failure) in Go?
Scope solves multiple uses with one nice keyword.
After all, the "thing" you are leaving is called scope.

> /-/
>
> If you have a few more weeks, this list is long :)

Please put any fixable issues / actionable ideas on Bugzilla. 
Thanks!

> Unfortunately, because the code base it is impossible to fix 
> these issues as too much code depends on it. The libraries, 
> packages, ...

Yes, but it looks like all these issues can be fixed / improved 
with better documentation
For example, for scope:

https://tour.dlang.org/tour/en/gems/scope-guards

If you don't like it, please improve it!