DMD 0.170 release (foreach_reverse)

[Mike Parker]

Bill Baxter wrote:

> The price of a poorly thought-out feature in a language can have 
> repercussions beyond how it affects one's day to day writing of code.

It's a keyword with an underscore. Big deal. No one has to use it. I 
really think this is being blown way out of proportion. I've read all of 
these arguments against foreach_reverse and they just don't make sense 
to me. How is it poorly thought out? It makes perfect sense to me.

> 
> Already there have been a few people here who looked at foreach_reverse 
> and said "if this is representative of D, then I'll find another 
> alternative, thank you".  If the community shrinks, or fails to grow as 
> it could, then that certainly impacts all D users.  It's all about the 
> network effect.  I can say for myself when I saw the foreach_reverse 
> addition it seriously made me consider whether there was any hope for D 
> long term.  If this is the kind of design decision being made today, 
> then what hope is there for the long term?  There's no Bell Labs or Sun 
> Microsystems backing it, so it can't just power its way through bad 
> design.  It's got to compete on quality.

People who turn away from D because of one keyword they find unusual can 
stay away. I wouldn't want to work with such people. Programmers can be 
a fickle lot, but that's ridiculous in the extreme. It's like the C++ 
programmer who says, "If your code uses char*, you have a bug."

There are other issues in D that are more likely to, and have, turned 
people away, as I see it. A keyword with an underscore that no one even 
need use is nothing.