Pure functions in D

[Bruno Medeiros]

Ary Borenszweig wrote:
> Mosfet wrote:
>> Josh Szepietowski wrote:
>>> Walter Bright Wrote:
>>>
>>>> Knud Soerensen wrote:
>>>>> When are pure functions coming to dmd ?
>>>> They're about half-implemented. Given the unexpected huge interest 
>>>> in this, I'll have to bump up the priority!
>>>
>>> Fantastic news! I must reveal that pure functions are the "killer 
>>> feature" in D2.0 for me, personally.
>>
>> Don't really understand why this feature is so important while there 
>> are so many things to achieve.
> 
> True. They won't boost your productivity. They won't free you from bugs. 
> They will just enhance your application's performance.

And even on the performance front I'm a bit skeptical on how well it can 
be used in practice.
So I do agree that this is really not one of the most important features 
  of D, and even if it's very important for concurrency, to succeed D 
still needs to get the basics of a language done right, and there is 
still much other work to be done here.

But there is one advantage in having pure and other extensive reforming 
features implemented as soon as possible, which is to prevent future 
major breaking changes in the language... We've all seen the rift D2's 
const has created, so the more overhauls that get done ASAP, the better. 
But we must settle down sometimes, and never forget the other important 
pending issues D has.


-- 
Bruno Medeiros - Software Developer, MSc. in CS/E graduate
http://www.prowiki.org/wiki4d/wiki.cgi?BrunoMedeiros#D