Reddit: why aren't people using D?

[Steven Schveighoffer]

On Thu, 23 Jul 2009 17:13:13 -0400, Bill Baxter <wbaxter at gmail.com> wrote:

> In any event I think a problem with this is that for D's simple
> grammar to remain simple and context free, get and set would both have
> to be made keywords in the language.  Can a compiler guru confirm
> that?  Not a big issue, but introducing 3 keywords for this one
> feature will be a tough sell.   Perhaps just
>
> property int length {
>     () { return this.len; }
>     (newLen) { this.len = newLen; }
> }
>
> would be enough.  Maybe I'm wrong about get/set being an issue, though.

I think you might be wrong.  operator functions like opAdd are not  
keywords, but are treated specially by the compiler.  The compiler would  
probably just change the get and set functions into mangled symbols that  
would never be generated from a normal function, so no keywords would be  
required.

-Steve