Unofficial wish list status.(Jul 2008)

[superdan]

Walter Bright Wrote:

> Sean Kelly wrote:
> > Walter Bright wrote:
> >> But, you said you didn't wish to mix functional and imperative 
> >> programming? I don't understand.
> > 
> > Not in the same language.  One reason being the impact it will have on 
> > managing projects in D.  C++, for example, supports a sufficiently 
> > diverse set of programming methodologies that large projects in it tend 
> > to be a mess.
> 
> I agree that diverse paradigm support can lead to a mess.

that's like agreeing that ice cream consumption can lead to auto theft. what a heap of bullshit that is.

correlation is not causation. if we go by any reasonable train of thought, we'd see that c++ being multiparadigm is an advantage not an issue. people have written articles and books about how cool that is. they haven't written articles and books about what is sinking c++: the fucking syntax (bjarne is ok at a high level but he can't design syntax to save his life from a tribe of fucking horny and hungry gay cannibals); the shittiest exception model in the history of humankind (statically specified but dynamically-checked... worst of all worlds... what the fuck were they thinking about? shit); useless namespaces (what a useless pile of pigshit that whole feature is... and they can't even blame it to C... it was designed from scratch!); the template subsystem that is too much heat and smoke for the light; and a fucking million minor wounds, starting with "class" vs. "struct" shit and ending with copying at the drop of a hat.

> On the other 
> hand, to be a mainstream language I think one must support diverse 
> paradigms because programmers are diverse. Additionally, nobody really 
> knows yet which horse is the right one to back for multicore 
> programming, but functional certainly is a favorite.

absolutely. 

> I disagree that using multiple languages for one project is a good idea, 
> unless one language is hosted by the other (like emacs/elisp). Trying to 
> get two languages produced by different vendors to consistently work 
> together across platforms and differing upgrade schedules can be a 
> prescription for a lot of extra work. Is learning two different 
> languages really easier than learning two different paradigms in the 
> same language?

looks like you haven't used unix much. a large project, even when developed by competent programmers acting on their free will, will inevitably use at least a few dsls (make, shell) in addition to one or more mainstream languages. why? because it's the best way. a n00b shouts foul when seeing a 5000 lines makefile or shell config or whatever. but they forget that manages a project that's a thousand times larger. 

> > Regarding the D mixed functional / imperative approach, another issue I 
> > have with it is that it's exactly the reverse of the Erlang / C model. 
> > While Erlang / C is functional for control structures and imperative for 
> > optimization points, D looks like it will be imperative for control and 
> > functional for optimization.  Plus, I really like the concurrency model 
> > in Erlang.
> 
> A side note: Everyone complains about feature bloat in Microsoft Word. 
> What the world needs is a lean, mean word processor. But the problem is, 
> customer Bill says: "That's great, but I need feature #543. Not having 
> it is a deal breaker for me." Customer Sue says: "I'd buy the lean & 
> mean one, but I need feature #1678. Everything I do is based on that." 
> And so on. Feature creep is the result of inexorable and unrelenting 
> pressure for them.

as can be seen on this newsgroup.