shouting versus dotting

[Andrei Alexandrescu]

Aarti_pl wrote:
> Don pisze:
>> 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).
>>
>>
> 
> Well, I want just say "I agree" to all written above by Bill, Don and 
> others who like current syntax.
> 
> I wanted to write a bit more today morning but I stopped myself as I 
> would probably write too much :-P
> 
> ------
> 
> I would be much more happy with implementation of my proposal:
> http://d.puremagic.com/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=1827
> 
> I mean here especially syntax for "is expression" for templates.
> 
> http://digitalmars.com/d/1.0/expression.html#IsExpression
> 
> As it occurred on Tango conference in talk of Rafał Bocian (who lead the 
> D course for students) syntax for "is expression" and specification 
> (among few other things) is especially difficult for newbies in D.
> 
> Unfortunately answer from Walter, why he didn't decide to change current 
>  syntax was.... guess what? --- It doesn't look nice in code...
> 
> Bad luck, said sad pirate .(
> 
> BR
> Marcin Kuszczak
> (aarti_pl)

Your proposal should be reevaluated in wake of the conditional 
templates, which Walter has implemented a couple of releases ago.

Andrei