auto: useful, annoying or bad practice?

[Craig Dillabaugh]

On Monday, 30 April 2018 at 21:11:07 UTC, Gerald wrote:
> I'll freely admit I haven't put a ton of thought into this post 
> (never a good start), however I'm genuinely curious what 
> people's feeling are with regards to the auto keyword.
>
> Speaking for myself, I dislike the auto keyword. Some of this 
> is because I have a preference for static languages and I find 
> auto adds ambiguity with little benefit. Additionally, I find 
> it annoying that the phobos documentation relies heavily on 
> auto obscuring return types and making it a bit more difficult 
> to follow what is happening which gives me a bad taste for it.
>
clip
>
> So I'm curious, what's the consensus on auto?

As some have pointed out, it certainly has value. For example, in 
functions returning ranges, etc. where you wouldn't want to have 
to write out the whole type.

However, as an infrequent D user I admit I prefer to see the 
actual type where it is feasible, as I find 'auto' is a barrier 
to understanding to someone who isn't familiar with a particular 
piece of code.  I would never use auto in place of a basic type.