shouting versus dotting

[Bill Baxter]

On Tue, Oct 7, 2008 at 2:25 AM, superdan <super at dan.org> wrote:
> Bill Baxter Wrote:
>
>> On Mon, Oct 6, 2008 at 11:58 PM, Steven Schveighoffer
>> <schveiguy at yahoo.com> wrote:
>> > "Ary Borenszweig" wrote
>>
>> > I still vote to keep ! as it's the easiest solution, and I never have found
>> > it annoying ;)
>>
>> Yeh, me too.
>>
>> The @ (and #) also take up too much width in a small mono-space font
>> like the Proggy font I use.  And so they run into the previous and
>> following chars making them less readable.   ! is nice and thin so it
>> doesn't have that problem.
>>
>> { } vs ( ) is also a fairly subtle distinction in a small font.
>> Usually the context and usage is different enough that that doesn't
>> matter.   But of course you may just tell me I should change my font
>> in that case.
>
> spoken like a true prodigy. yeah. change yer font.

Well, I think it's more a matter of the size than the particular font,
though.  So the remedy would probably be to switch to a font that
takes up more screen real-estate, meaning I'll get fewer lines of D to
the page.

But there *is* a difference between { and ( even with Proggy at 6x10
-- 2 pixels are shifted one position.  I suppose it's not any more
subtle than the difference between . and , which is seen everywhere.
I'm sure I could get used to it if it's what the D community thinks is
best.   Anyway I think foo{} is more readable than foo.().

> thing is that's important. i don't mind !() much myself. like a mole on an otherwise fine piece of ass. got used to it. but like u i also remember in the beginning i was like, what's wrong with walt did he run out of ideas or what.
>
> to some1 coming anew to d stuff like what!(the!(hell!())) is freakin' weird. no two ways about it. you just keep starin' at that mole like austin powers. if there's a way to get rid of it then whynot. helps attract newcomerz eh.

I thought it was bizarre till I read the justification here
   http://www.digitalmars.com/d/1.0/templates-revisited.html.
Then  I thought, OK.  Not a bad idea.  It's better than parsing
ambiguities, and being forced to insert spaces between punctuation to
avoid them.

But I agree that as an utter newbie to D, foo{bar} would probably have
seemed more elegant and obvious as a template syntax than re-purposing
the unary NOT operator.  The newbie's response to "foo{bar} is a
template instantiation" would probably be "ok, sure." instead of
"Why??"

Still it seems like a big bike shed issue.  And it's bizarre coming
from the guy who's usually the first one to call "bike shed" anytime
anyone else makes a suggestion to improve aesthetics.

--bb