DeRailed DSL (was Re: compile-time regex redux)

[Don Clugston]

Walter Bright wrote:
> Andrei Alexandrescu (See Website For Email) wrote:
>> Walter Bright wrote:
>>> I know from these messages it seems that all we talk about is 
>>> metaprogramming, but actually most of our discussions (and most of 
>>> Andrei's work on D) are about filling in mundane gaps in the 
>>> language, like the lack of a proper const. 
>>
>> Ehm. Somehow I thought it's actually interesting. Reminds me of Tom 
>> Sawyer's neighbors painting the fence for him :o).
> 
> It's mundane in the sense that if we do it right, like the foundation of 
> a house, nobody will notice it. If we do it wrong, it'll be front page 
> like the crane that fell over last month and sliced through a high rise 
> condo.
> 
> I couldn't be in this business if I didn't enjoy the mundane details <g>.

It's interesting to me that the features I requested back around DMD 
0.135, which made elementary metaprocessing of strings possible, were so 
mundane  --- "abcd"[2..4] being exactly equivalent to "bc", for example.
It seems to me that some other languages (*cough* C# *cough*) have tried 
to reach for the flashy stuff without getting the mundane things right.
Mundane is good.