If D becomes a failure, what's the key reason, do you think?

[David Medlock]

"c) Are passed allocated objects, which they are *NOT* allowed to 
manipulate."

These are called interfaces, and are quite do-able in D.

"d) Allocate and return objects/data that shouldn't be manipulated by 
the user."

Such as what?  Nothing in D stops the two cases above.


kris wrote:

> David Medlock wrote:
> 
>> No offenses intended, this is bordering
>> on an obsession.
> 
> 
> No offence intended, but your zip is down
> 
> <g>
> 
>> With garbage collection, I just don't see the HUGE benefits of const....
> 
> 
> And "640KB of RAM should be enough for anyone"

Not having const is not a limitation- its a semantic addition.  Whether 
its a feature depends on what you are trying to do.

> 
> What does "HUGE" mean to you, anyway? Perhaps you'd care to spell out 
> those benefits you know of, so we can perhaps quantify your use of that 
> adjective?

HUGE meaning my workflow/productivity increased.  The computers work for 
us, not the other way around.  If it doesn't make me write programs 
faster or better, it isn't a feature.

The advantages always boil down to one of:
1. Multithreaded code - does not help unless you get rid of pointers and 
delegates!
2. Performance   - much better potential than const in this area.
3. Ref counting  - popular in the 80s....pretty much proven useless for 
85 percent of real tasks, and its not thread safe.

Anything outside of those things...?

I know it has uses, but so does anything else.  The difference is 
whether the cost of acquiring it justifies it(C++ const I mean).

-DavidM