Is enum static?

[H. S. Teoh]

On Thu, Aug 08, 2013 at 06:47:48PM -0400, Jonathan M Davis wrote:
> On Thursday, August 08, 2013 15:40:25 H. S. Teoh wrote:
> > Are we going to fix this anytime soon (or at all)? If not, we'd
> > better start documenting this, since currently enums are being sold
> > as manifest constants, and most people would understand that as
> > meaning it's only allocated once at compile-time/startup-time. It
> > would leave a very bad impression if new users unknowingly end up
> > with a lot of unwanted allocations just from using a language
> > feature as-advertised.
> 
> There's nothing to fix. It's by design. That _is_ what a manifest
> constant is as far as D is concerned. And if you search for manifest
> constants online, you end up running into stuff that talks about
> #define in C, which does the same thing. So, I don't think that we're
> doing anything abnormal here. We just have to make sure that it's
> clear in the documentation that that's how manifest constants work. I
> don't know what the documentation currently says though.
[...]

Seriously, I think we should hire a tech writer. The way we manage our
docs just ... leaves a lot to be desired. It's very unclear to
newcomers, and even to someone who's been working with D for a while,
like myself.

In fact, I'm going to update http://wiki.dlang.org/Declaring_constants
right now, to reflect this caveat. Maybe I'll submit a pull for the
language docs.

But honestly, I can totally understand why many people find D docs very
frustrating. In fact, I found the online docs so unhelpful when I first
found D, that it delayed my adopting D for at least half a year until
one day I saw TDPL in a local bookstore and decided to buy it. A friend
of mine has told me, in private, that after trying out D he liked the
language, but one of the things he decidedly did NOT like was the docs.
I think the only real solution to this is to hire a full-time tech
writer to do the documentation, and do it *properly*. We're doing a
great language a great disservice by documenting it so poorly.


T

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