[~OT] Finally, a clear, concise D spec!

[Daniel Keep]

Jarrett Billingsley wrote:
> http://web.archive.org/web/20010830214723/www.digitalmars.com/d/
> 
> It's the D spec from August 2001.  It's fun to see what D _used_ to
> be, and the, cough, lovable monster it's become today ;)

Some interesting differences:

* real used to be extended.
* alias used to be typealias.
* Good old bit :D
* Phobos used to be called "D Class Library" and only had 11 classes in
it: Math, File, String, Regexp, GC, Thread, Process, Date, Zip, System
and Random.
* There were TWO character types: ascii and unicode; unicode changed
size by platform (16-bits under Windows, 32-bit under linux).  And
people think char[], wchar[], dchar[] is messy!
* version didn't take an identifier; it actually evaluated an
expression.  One example given was: version(system.os == OS.WindowsNT)
* No foreach!
* Classes didn't have protection attributes on super classes.
Considering this has never done anything AFAIK, I wonder why it was ever
added...
* There were no packages, meaning all your modules were shoved into a
single namespace!
* No templates!

>From the FAQ:

When can I get a D compiler?
I'm hard at work on one. I hope in a couple months. I had not
anticipated being slashdotted.

A time when no D compilers existed?  Such a dark, barbaric time...

What about templates?
Templates were not in the original plans for D. C++ was wildly
successful even before templates were added, and Java is wildly
successful without templates. The feedback I've been getting, however,
is that D will not be successful without some form of templates, so in
they go.

Whoever it was that convinced Walter to add templates: THANK YOU!

Why emphasize implementation ease?
Isn't ease of use for the user of the language more important? Yes, it is...

HAHAHAHA *snort*

Sorry, but you can't seriously claim D is still easy to implement whilst
.stringof still exists in its current form.  :P