An inconvenient truth

[Andrei Alexandrescu]

Dave wrote:
>>
>> Anyhow, this segment of the discussion is somewhat orthogonal to the 
>> rest of it as I think we all agree a Unicode notation will be an 
>> alternative, not an exclusive choice for template instantiations.
>>
> 
> Alternative? That's really what we need; a different group of symbols 
> that denote exactly the same thing, in Unicode no less <g>
> 
> This whole discussion is getting goofy.
> 
> Imagine a code maintainer who has a hard enough time grasping what the 
> template code is doing, much less having to slog through code where the 
> original developer(s) decided to use the Unicode "alternative" depending 
> on what day of the week it was.
> 
> Beautiful!
> 
> Let's all step back for a second here, and then just grant that Walter's 
> original idea is good enough and move on to more important issues.
> 
> It took me all of, oh, 5 seconds to look at some D template examples to 
> figure out what was going on and start emulating it with a "Hello D 
> Template World" of my own for a little practice. So I think the notion 
> that new users are going to eschew D or D templates based on the !() 
> syntax is just plain wrong, especially since somehow the discussion has 
> now changed to a Unicode Alternative (which, BTW, would only make it 
> harder on new users).

You'd be amazed. I personally know two guys - awesome hackers - who 
wouldn't touch Eiffel in part because it introduces comments with "--". 
Not only that, but for one of them that was all the example he had to 
get to never even look at Eiffel. In fact I think this anecdote will 
start the introduction of TDPL. I think it's very instructive with 
regard to how much people care about syntax, and in what arbitrary ways.

Andrei