new DIP5: Properties 2

[Benji Smith]

Bill Baxter wrote:
> On Fri, Jul 31, 2009 at 10:09 PM, Andrei
> Alexandrescu<SeeWebsiteForEmail at erdani.org> wrote:
>> Benji Smith wrote:
>>> So the clusterfuck of unenforceable and useless conventions is already
>>> here. Here's my suggestions: if you think putting parentheses on a no-arg
>>> function is stupid, then it should be a syntax error for them to exist. That
>>> wouldn't be my first choice, but it'd be a thousand times better than the
>>> situation with optional parens.
>>>
>>> --benji
>> I agree that it's not good to have two ways of doing the same thing. Now
>> think of it for a second: a full-blown language feature has been proposed to
>> not fix that, but reify it.

D already has a *truckload* of such features. Aliases, typedefs, renamed 
imports, and overloaded operators all exists solely so that a programmer 
can pretend that one thing is another thing, so that an API designer can 
more precisely express the *intent* of the code, and with semantics that 
are enforced by the compiler.

Compared with those other features, I don't see what's so different 
about the properties proposals.

--benji