Unofficial wish list status.(Jul 2008)

[Walter Bright]

superdan wrote:
> Walter Bright Wrote:
>> 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.

Sometimes having too many different ways of doing the same thing is a 
curse rather than a help. See my blog post on that at 
http://dobbscodetalk.com/index.php?option=com_myblog&show=Language-Features-for-Management.html&Itemid=29


> 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.

Oh, I agree, but it is also *can* be a problem. Like my Bronco, half the 
bolts in it are metric and the other half are standard. There doesn't 
even appear to be a discernible pattern as to which is which, I have to 
keep two tool sets at hand when working on it.


> 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);

I was around for the debates when exceptions were designed for C++. The 
reason for the mucked up design is that people at the time didn't know 
any better. That's not an aspersion on the C++ designers, but the fact 
was there wasn't much of any existing body of experience to draw upon. 
Nobody knew then what the right way to do it was.

It's like the Wright Bros inventing wing warping. History has shown that 
wing warping is a crappy solution (ailerons work much better), but 
ailerons were a future invention, and the Wrights *did* find a solution 
to the problem of lateral control in a time when nobody else had a clue.

There is no excuse, however, for the template < > syntax because it was 
well known at the time what the problems with it would be, and those 
predicted problems have plagued C++ ever since.


> 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.

The 5000 line makefile isn't bound into the resulting app, either.


>> 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.

Everyone has a different idea of what features should be put in D. There 
are proposals every day.