shouting versus dotting

[Don]

Bill Baxter wrote:
> 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.

I agree with all these. There's a lot of other things I wish Andrei were 
working on instead.
I'd hope for a colossal benefit, from something which would break almost 
all my code...

(BTW Putting template parameters inside normal parens would be an 
adequate benefit).