Challenge: write a reference counted slice that works as much as possible like a built-in slice

[deadalnix]

On Monday, 8 November 2021 at 22:38:27 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu 
wrote:
>> I believe 4 and 5 to be impossible in D right now, 6 can be 
>> solved using a ton of runtime checks.
>
> To which I say, stop posting, start coding.

As I said, I believe 4 and 5 to be impossible at the moment.

In fact, I forgot but there is one more unsolvable problem if you 
want the whole thing to be safe: there is no way to prevent 
what's owned the the RCSlice from escaping.

There is a reason why, even though the value is clearly there, 
this endeavor has been on table table for 10 years+ and no real 
progress has been made. You can't just build on quicksand.

If I'm to be honest, I've wasted enough of my time trying to get 
any kind of progress on this front. I've written DIP, I've 
explains how other proposal won't fix the problem, it all proved 
to be a giant waste of time. I'd be thrilled to be able to 
contribute to improve this, but [this message from 
Walter](https://forum.dlang.org/post/slqbqm$2us2$1@digitalmars.com) is a string indicator that not much has changed and it would be a waste of my time.

At this point, short of some kind of intervention happening, I 
don't really see any significant progress being made on any of 
this.

So yes, I'm coding, every day. But not that, because I know the 
foundation required just aren't there, and I don't have the 
leverage to have anything move on the foundation front.