Printing shortest decimal form of floating point number with Mir

[Ola Fosheim Grøstad]

On Tuesday, 5 January 2021 at 17:13:01 UTC, ag0aep6g wrote:
> Sure. I've said in my first post in this thread that "issue 
> 1807 is well worth fixing/implementing".

Ok, if we have a majority for this, then all is good.

> A program has a bug when it doesn't behave as intended by its 
> author. I think that's a pretty permissive definition of bug. 
> So, DMD has a bug when it doesn't behave as Walter intended 
> when he wrote or accepted the code.

Ok, I can't argue if that is the definition.

My main concern is that we need to attract more people with a 
strong comp.sci. background because as a language grow it becomes 
more tricky to improve and the most difficult topics are the ones 
that remain unresolved (like we see with @live, shared and GC).

I agree that there are more important topics than streamlining 
parametric types. Like shared and memory management. But it is 
still important to have an idea of which areas are worth picking 
up, if someone comes along with an interest in writing solvers, 
then this could be something he/she could tinker with.

> should work. Walter has not come forward to say that he made a 
> mistake in the implementation.

Ok, but that is not important. What is important is that if 
someone comes along with an interest in this area, then we can 
encourage them to work on it.


> Done. Incremental improvements lead to a system that works 
> pretty well a lot of the time. That's Walter's signature, isn't 
> it?


That happens in many compiler development cycles. Of course, D 
has also added a lot of features... perhaps at the expense of 
bringing what is to perfection.

> I don't disagree. But we have to work with what we got. The 
> implementation exists. The spec doesn't.

It probably would be a good idea to focus on one subsystem at a 
time. Refactor, document, make a list of priority improvements 
for that subsystem, and then improve/reimplement, document, then 
move on to the next subsystem.

If memory management is in the center now, then that is great, 
but then maybe the next cycle could take another look at the type 
system as a whole.