BLADE 0.2Alpha: Vector operations with mixins, expression templates, and asm

[Don Clugston]

Walter Bright wrote:
> Don Clugston wrote:
>> I have been trying to come up with a convincing use case for the new 
>> mixins (and for metaprogramming in general). My best effort to date 
>> can be found at:
>> http://www.dsource.org/projects/mathextra/browser/trunk/mathextra/Blade.d
> 
> This is pretty incredible.

I thought you'd like it. The sheer power of D these days...
"Flies like a rocket, steers like a bicycle."

> Can I beg you to write an article about it?

OK. Are you thinking somewhere like DDJ?

It's nicely focused (central idea being something like "D's 
metaprogramming is so powerful, that compiler back-end optimisation can 
easily be performed in compile-time libraries") -- but it would require 
loads of explanation of D's coolest features. Could be a challenge to 
make it easily readable.

But with the proposed changes to 'const', macros, and previous 
discussion about whether tuples should be automatically flattened, I 
have doubts over how stable that part of the language is. I wouldn't 
want to write something that didn't compile any more, or looked 
hopelessly obsolete by the time it was published.
I've been bitten before -- CTFE blasted almost all of my previous 
metaprogramming code into the stone age <g>. What's the shelf life of 
this stuff?.