shouting versus dotting

[Janderson]

Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
> 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

That's a shame :(