const sucks

[Andrei Alexandrescu]

Derek Parnell wrote:
> On Sat, 18 Oct 2008 20:36:51 -0700, Walter Bright wrote:
> 
>> The problem is things like:
>>
>>    void foo(int[] a)
>>    {
>>      int[] b;
>>    }
>>
>> so a is const, and b is mutable? That's very confusing. It gives the 
>> appearance of D having a lot of wacky and arbitrary semantic rules.
> 
> I work with the Euphoria language and this has been the case since its
> begining. No one, from newbie-coder to experienced coders of a number of
> languages have EVER thought this as weird.
> 
> In Euphoria, there is NO WAY one can change a function's argument. The
> caller of a function can have complete confidence that any argument passed
> will not have its value changed by the function. However, variables local
> to the function are not immutable.
> 
> Your fears may need empirical evidence before I would take them seriously.

Well claiming that you know what everybody using Euphoria has ever 
thought sets the standard pretty low in terms of evidence.

Andrei