Article: Why Const Sucks

[Radu]

On Monday, 5 March 2018 at 10:57:35 UTC, Jonathan M Davis wrote:
> Here's something I wrote up on const:
>
> http://jmdavisprog.com/articles/why-const-sucks.html
>
> I suppose that it's not exactly the most positive article, but 
> I feel that it's accurate.
>
> - Jonathan M Davis

Spot on article, and touches some of my pain points when working 
with const/immutable structs.

Recently I tried to create a ref-counted immutable struct, oh 
boi...

This later use case is of tremendous value for safe concurrent 
code that's @nogc. Unfortunately I couldn't find a way to make it 
work efficiently and in the same time not look like a disgusting 
hack.

I suspect a possible solution is to allow immutable(const) 
postblit overloads as well as immutable dtors that will act as an 
escape hatch for unsafe work and in the same time provide hints 
that you are operating on an immutable(const) this.