Discussion Thread: DIP 1036--String Interpolation Tuple Literals--Community Review Round 2

[Steven Schveighoffer]

On 1/29/21 1:49 PM, Paul Backus wrote:
> When you find yourself saying things like "it's fine, we can just add 
> special
> cases to printf...and tuple...and mixin...", that's a sure sign that 
> something
> has gone wrong in your language-feature design.

This seems to suggest we aren't done when the DIP is passed. That isn't 
the case.

No special cases are needed. mixins will work, printf will not (unless 
you want to write a wrapper). tuple doesn't need a special case, it will 
do what you ask, you have to ask it the write thing.

These forums are full of "how do I do X with D?" and someone answers and 
they say "Thanks" and move on, having learned something. It is no 
different here. People have asked "You can't use printf with it", and I 
answered the question. I'm not saying "hey, let's add a printf wrapper 
to phobos and only then this DIP will be complete", I'm saying "if for 
some reason you want to use it with printf, here's how you would do it".

It seems we are in a trap where someone says "yeah but you can't do 
this", and answering that question "no, you're right" means it's a 
failed feature. Answering that question with "yes, here's how" ALSO 
means it's a failed feature.

-Steve