dmd 2.029 release

[Andrei Alexandrescu]

Craig Black wrote:
> I like very much the direction D2 is going now.  Language refactoring 
> and enhancements driven by the goal of more elegant implementation of 
> standard libraries.  This approach seems very practical and promising.  
> Thank you very much and keep it up!
> 
> -Craig

Thanks. Walter pointed out to me something interesting - STL is 
non-intuitive. That doesn't make it any less true (as a pursuit of the 
most generic incarnation of fundamental structs and algos). It's 
non-intuitive the same way complex numbers and relativity theory are 
non-intuitive.

No language has ever managed to comprehend STL by sheer chance. (This in 
spite of e.g. C# adding a boatload of new features with each release.) 
There are two that can express it at all: C++ and D. Both C++ and D had 
to be changed to allow STL to exist, and became better languages as a 
result. The range shtick and D's support for lambdas is taking STL 
support to a whole new level.

The downside is, it's rather difficult to explain the STL to anyone 
using other languages and wanting to just figure what the STL buzz is 
all about.


Andrei