An inconvenient truth

[Nick Sabalausky]

"Andrei Alexandrescu" <SeeWebsiteForEmail at erdani.org> wrote in message 
news:gcil6r$de3$1 at digitalmars.com...
> 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.
>

I don't think it's worth it to cater to people who are that particular, 
because you'll probably just end up turning away other people who are every 
bit as particular, but on the opposite side of the fence.

That's not to say that small things don't matter and should never be given 
any thought. But making a language design choice of "--" vs. "//" or 
"!(...)" vs "<...>" shouldn't involve worrying about people that are 
dead-set on one or the other.