Feedback Thread: DIP 1036--Formatted String Tuple Literals--Community Review Round 1

[Paul Backus]

On Tuesday, 8 September 2020 at 10:59:58 UTC, Mike Parker wrote:
> This is the feedback thread for the first round of Community 
> Review of DIP 1036, "Formatted String Tuple Literals".

Scott Meyers has a talk, available on youtube [1], in which he 
argues that the single most important software design guideline 
is that "interfaces should be easy to use correctly, and hard to 
use incorrectly." Let's assume, for the sake of argument, that we 
all agree with him. (If you do not agree, feel free to disregard 
this comment.)

What this DIP proposes is an interface that is both hard to use 
correctly, and hard to use incorrectly. While the efforts taken 
to prevent misuse are admirable, the burden they impose on 
programmers who merely wish to use string interpolation 
as-intended is unacceptably high. Personally, I've supported 
adding string interpolation to D in the past, but I would not use 
it if it were implemented as this DIP proposes.

I could point to specific details of the proposal that I think 
lead to undue complexity, but I don't think I need to. The fact 
that the DIP authors feel the need to devote as many words to 
"justifications" of their proposal's complexity as they do to 
actually explaining it in the first place is evidence enough. 
They are well aware of what they have written, and of its flaws.

I think the reason the DIP authors have ended up with such a 
flawed proposal is that they have tried too hard to reach a 
compromise between mutually-incompatible visions of what string 
interpolation ought to be. Some people want compatibility with 
`printf`, and others want compatibility with `writeln`, so we end 
up with a proposal that's compatible with neither. Some people 
want implicit conversion to `string`, others want implicit 
conversion to `const(char)*`, so we end up with explicit 
conversion required for both. And so on, for each point of 
contention raised in every previous discussion of string 
interpolation in D.

This approach is fundamentally flawed. It can lead to Good Work, 
but never to Great Work [2], and Great Work is the standard that 
I expect a language addition like this will be held to. As such, 
I do not think any version of this proposal has much chance of 
being accepted by the language maintainers. I recommend that this 
DIP be withdrawn.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5tg1ONG18H8
[2] 
https://forum.dlang.org/thread/q6plhj$1l9$1@digitalmars.com?page=15