Wed Oct 17 - Avoiding Code Smells by Walter Bright

[Stanislav Blinov]

On Tuesday, 30 October 2018 at 22:22:33 UTC, H. S. Teoh wrote:

> Haha, I liked how Walter caught the audience's attention by 
> using #include <windows.h> as the first example of a code 
> smell. :-D
>
> Honestly, though, IMO this is also a code smell:
>
> 	import std.stdio;
>
> That is, if it appears at the top of every source file.

IMO, if it appears anywhere at all :)
Pop quiz. Try to answer without compiling, what do you think this 
*should* print, and what *does* it print?

```
void main() {
     static struct S {
         int value;
         this(this) {
             ++value;
         }
     }

     writefln("%s", S.init);
}
```

In an imaginary ideal world, my answer to the first question 
would've been "S(0)"... The language has `auto ref` and `shared`, 
so it has all the capacity necessary to achieve that. Alas, 
there's a "but" in there somewhere...

> As for encapsulating globals in a struct, I don't like it...

That's something one has to rigorously audit at all times. 
Grouping of globals is something that just *must* be done, but 
first and foremost having in mind access locality. The last thing 
you want to do is sacrifice cache just for that one occasional 
read or write (*cough* errno *cough*...)