shouting versus dotting

[Andrei Alexandrescu]

Janderson wrote:
> Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
>> dsimcha wrote:
>>> == Quote from Andrei Alexandrescu (SeeWebsiteForEmail at erdani.org)'s 
>>> article
>>>> The problem I see with "!" as a template instantiation is not 
>>>> technical.
>>>> I write a fair amount of templated code and over years the "!" did not
>>>> grow on me at all. I was time and again consoled by Walter than one day
>>>> that will happen, but it never did. I also realized that Walter didn't
>>>> see a problem with it because he writes only little template code.
>>>> I didn't have much beef with other oddities unique to D. For example, I
>>>> found no problem accommodating binary "~" and I was wondering what 
>>>> makes
>>>> "!" different. I was just looking at a page full of templates and it
>>>> looked like crap.
>>>> One morning I woke up with the sudden realization of what the problem
>>>> was: the shouting.
>>>> In C, "!" is used as a unary operator. That may seem odd at first, but
>>>> it nevers follows a word so it's tenuous to associate it with the
>>>> natural language "!". In D, binary "!" _always_ follows a word, a name,
>>>> something coming from natural language. So the conotation with
>>>> exclamation jumps at you.
>>>> That's why I find the choice of "!" poor. I believe it can impede to
>>>> some extent acquisition of templates by newcomers, and conversely I
>>>> believe that using .() can make templates more palatable. I tried using
>>>> ".()" in my code and in only a couple of days it looked and felt way
>>>> better to me. Based on that experience, I suggest that "!()" is dropped
>>>> in favor of ".()" for template instantiation for D2.
>>>> Sean's argument that "The exclamation mark signifies an assertion of
>>>> sorts" is exactly where I'd want templates not to be: they should be
>>>> blended in, not a hiccup from normal code. Serious effort has been, and
>>>> still is, made in D to avoid shell-shocking people about use of
>>>> templates, and I think ".()" would be a good step in that direction.
>>>> Andrei
>>>
>>> Personally, I think that ".()" looks a little too much like a normal
>>> function/method call.  The "!()" syntax looks just different enough 
>>> to make it
>>> easy to keep straight in my head that stuff with the "!" is a 
>>> compile-time
>>> construct and stuff without it can be evaluated at runtime.
>>
>> I'm arguing we _should_ make template code look like "normal" code, 
>> whatever "normal" is :o). We _should_ strive for "quiet" templates.
>>
>> You know what annoys the living heebiejeebies out of me? Nested 
>> template instantiations.
>>
>> This!(That!(TheOther!(crap)))
>>
>> I have a ton + change of those. In superdan's words: intercourse that.
>>
>>
>> Andrei
> 
> I guess if you want to make template look like normal code your could 
> look at extending that static syntax to accept things like alias:
> 
> void FooTemplate(alias T, alias T2, static T x, T2 f)
> {
> ...
> }
> 
> 
> //call
> 
> int value;
> FooTemplate(int, int, 10, value);
> 
> //And with induction T2 can be solved so (Note: I'm considering 
> induction either all that can be solved, or nothing)
> FooTemplate(int, 10, value);
> 
> 
> -Joel

Walter actually went out implementing this for days and reached 
irreconcilable issues.

Andrei