Number literals (Was: Re: Case Range Statement ..)

[bearophile]

Andrei Alexandrescu:

>I can't understand what's going on. It starts looking like a disfunctional relationship: the more Walter and others do, the less content people on the group are. I don't care much for being pat on the back, but it's extremely disheartening to see that the more we do the more we're getting yelled at. What I guess I'll do is just lay low and wait for the negative ions to go away.<

The last release has a large number of bug fixes, and it contains nice things, like:
>Use of with symbols that shadow local symbols is no longer allowed<
>Warning on no return expr; is now an error.<

And after I have hasked for a smarter building process many times Walter has now done a first step in the right direction (other people have already found a way to improve this):
>Bugzilla 3122: [patch] Adding support for fast and reliable build tools to the frontend<

So this update was a lot of work, I think no one will deny this.

Regarding what you say, people may look 'less content' partially because of the human nature: the more you have the more greedy you become and you want more. (Someone may be 'less content' because they understand they are not as good programmers as Walter, but I don't respect such people).

But I think that's not the main problem. I think the main problems are (I may be wrong, so I may talk just for myself):
- The syntax of the case range statements has not reached a consensus in the newsgroup, that means not enough people was agreeing with it. Yet, it's being implemented.
- The new rules for integral conversion have being introduced with no public discussion first. People don't like that. (I have to test how such rules work in real programs before commenting about them again.) Eventually most people may appreciate this new feature anyway.

I suggest to not implement something if 30% or more of people don't like it during the discussions. Even if you like the case range syntax, some people don't like it :-)

And in the end keep in mind that lot of people criticize only the things they like and care of, and they just ignore the things they aren't interested of. So if they complain it means they appreciate D and the work done by Walter :-)

Bye,
bearophile