More keywords? Or fewer?

[Davidson Corry]

Bruce Adams wrote:
> I agree with pretty much everything you've said. However, I'm not clear 
> what point you're trying to make.

I often feel that way myself. <grin>

My point was that the language system ought to manage constness, 
invariance, synchronization on objects shared by multiple threads or 
processes, and so on, AUTOMATICALLY without requiring the programmer to 
manage those things explicitly (via keywords or whatever else), just as 
GC-enabled language systems now automatically manage memory allocation 
without requiring the programmer to use keywords etc. to do memory 
allocation explicitly.

And my counterpoint was to suggest that, if the language system DOES 
provide keywords/properties/libraries by which const etc. CAN be managed 
explicitly if desired (but not required), then those tools should be an 
orthogonal doublecheck on the language's automatic inference of how 
const etc. is to be managed, just as design by contract is a doublecheck 
on the "contract" implied by a program's actual behavior.

-- Dai