I wish I could use D for everything

[Jesse Phillips]

On Thu, 30 Apr 2009 21:20:17 -0700, Brad Roberts wrote:

> dsimcha wrote:
>> == Quote from Brad Roberts (braddr at puremagic.com)'s article
>>> dsimcha wrote:
>>>>  D2 is a complex language, but it's not complex in a haphazard way. 
>>>>  It's complex
>>>> because it statically proves stuff about your code (const, etc), and
>>>> allows extremely powerful, generic user-defined types.  These are the
>>>> kinds of things that most people only dream about.
>>> I'd like to drill into this 'd2 is a complex language' assertion more.
>>>  Can we build a factual list of the delta of complexity between d1 and
>>> d2? The primary area is the type system:
>>>   1) introduction of const
>>>       -- optional and doesn't affect callers of api's that declare
>>>       const params
>>>   2) introduction of immutable
>>>       -- less optional since it's not as coercable, but also less
>>>       frequently
>>> used in apis.
>>>   3) introduction of pure
>>>       -- optional, will not affect callers of apis
>>>   4) introduction of nothrow
>>>       -- optional, will not affect callers of apis
>>> Others:
>>> 5) template if clause
>>> I'm specifically leaving out Phobos and other library layer issues,
>>> though feel free to count the runtime as part of the language when
>>> adding to this list. -- Brad
>> 
>> Template alias parameters, ref returns, shared (even though it's not
>> implemented, it's on its way, so it still counts), closures, alias
>> this, template literals, struct ctors and dtors (and in general structs
>> becoming more like classes) to name a few.  I love all of these, and I
>> personally think the complexity is justified. It's just that I don't
>> know how easy it would be to convince someone coming from Java of this,
>> so I'm playing devil's advocate a little.
>> 
>> On the other hand, I do see a pattern here:  Most of these features are
>> things you only need to care about if you're writing near the tip of
>> the pyramid, stuff like generic, reusable code.  In fact, I've realized
>> that my mindset when coding in D is completely different when working
>> on something that aims to be extremely generic (like rangeextra or
>> dstats, stuff I wouldn't even be able to do in any language besides D)
>> vs. when working on day-to-day code that just has to solve one problem
>> well.  The latter is a lot easier, but also a lot less fun, from a
>> programming perspective.
> 
> I'm going to play devils advocate too...
> 
> struct ctor/dtor's are simplifiers.  They remove a hard to explain
> difference and aren't even a little bit hard to understand.
> 
> I'm tempted to say the same about ref return, but we can leave it in the
> adds column.
> 
> The rest I'll agree with (at least enough not to quibble much).
> 
> 
> -- Brad

I thought this stuff was good enough to deserve its own wiki page: http://
www.prowiki.org/wiki4d/wiki.cgi?D__Tutorial/D2Complexities