If you could make any changes to D, what would they look like?

[Gavin Ray]

On Sunday, 24 October 2021 at 19:00:17 UTC, Paul Backus wrote:
> Genuine question: is it really so difficult to write such code 
> "by hand"? I understand that language servers are convenient, 
> but I find it almost impossible to imagine being completely 
> unwilling or unable to write code without one.


Oh no, I do not have much issue with writing things by hand.
It's that using any post-fix/UFCS style function breaks the 
type-detection entirely.

Here's a recording to explain what I mean:

[Imgur Video - Dlang Tooling Issues](https://imgur.com/mf0KJk3)

So you see here that:
- The UCFS form of the same function used on a range gives no 
suggestions, documentations, etc
- The regular form gives on-hover docs, I can ctrl+click to go to 
it's definition
- Another problem which I didn't mention earlier: the state of D 
tooling allows you to pass the wrong types to functions. Here I 
pass `string[]` to a function which only takes `int[]` and the 
linter/lang server does not catch it. Only when I compile will a 
warning be showed.

Here's another good visual example with `partition` function:

- Trying to use UCFS to see which methods are available for my 
`Range` type, or to select the `partition` function I expect to 
see in the list to read the documentation

![](https://i.imgur.com/5DsEOoF.png)


- Just using regular function calls

![](https://i.imgur.com/juEa1lt.png)

![](https://i.imgur.com/5Y3G0Nt.png)