D const design rationale

[BCS]

Reply to Bill,

> I guess we're just quibbling over the definition of the "often" in
> your statement "Optimization often makes the difference between a
> successful project and a failure."

That reminds me of a thought I had a while ago: compilers are interesting 
beasts because they are a program that deals with programs. Not only that, 
but a compiler must be written to handle anything that is allowable, not 
just stuff that is a good idea (as opposed to the compiler that should be 
written only with code that is a good idea). This starts looking like the 
point that if a compiler is going to be used by some market where a few people 
need something, then the compiler needs it even if most people in the market 
don't need it.

I'm not sure if this is even remarkable but I though it was kind of interesting.