mixin + CTFE, to big a hammer??

[John Reimer]

On Thu, 01 Mar 2007 13:25:43 -0800, Andrei Alexandrescu (See Website For
Email) wrote:

> John Reimer wrote:
>> On Thu, 01 Mar 2007 13:29:30 -0700, Hasan Aljudy wrote:
>> 
>>> kris wrote:
>>>> BCS wrote:
>>>>> I have been thinking about the new functionality added by the code 
>>>>> mixin and CTFE features and I'm thinking that they may be "to big a 
>>>>> hammer" for may jobs.
>>>>>
>>>>> Take my parser generator as an example. I don't think there would be 
>>>>> anything to gain by using mixin as the primary method of code 
>>>>> generation. Firstly, code generated this way will inherently be harder 
>>>>> to read and debug. Also it doesn't do anything that tuple iteration 
>>>>> doesn't do just as well.
>>>>>
>>>>> I will admit that there may be some things to be gained there by using 
>>>>> mixin code (the terminal and action call backs could benefit a lot 
>>>>> from this) but these are only minor changes. Also mixin code would be 
>>>>> invaluable for some more complicated cases.
>>>>>
>>>>> Why is this important? I think that many valuable types of code 
>>>>> generation would benefit more by improving the static control 
>>>>> structures (foreach/if/etc.) than they would from more mixin like 
>>>>> features.
>>>>>
>>>>> One feature I would like is a true static foreach, one that can 
>>>>> iterate over any built in type arrays or a tuple but does unrolling 
>>>>> and per-loop semantic analysis like with tuples. This, in conjunction 
>>>>> with CTFE, would make for huge improvements in what can readily be 
>>>>> accomplished by moving much of the processing of the code generator 
>>>>> input into function and out of templates.
>>>>>
>>>>> Basically, I'm saying that while mixin+CTFE is good from many things, 
>>>>> it shouldn't be pushed at the expense of the more mundane techniques.
>>>>>
>>>>> Just some thoughts, what do you all think?
>>>>
>>>> D mixin, in it's current guise, is about equivalent to crack-cocaine. 
>>>> Easily the worst thing that happened to the language, IMO.
>>>>
>>>> Just say no
>>> Just give it time, wait for it to mature from experience.
>> 
>> ??
>> 
>> It's been around for a bit already. It doesn't seem to be getting better?
> 
> Patience is a virtue. :o) Besides, it's not like they started real bad.
> 
> Andrei


mixin's mixin's mixin's...that's all I'm saying.  

They didn't start really good either. But, I guess you and I could go back
and forth about whether that cup is half-full or half-empty. :)  Oh well.

-JJR