Reddit: why aren't people using D?

[Andrei Alexandrescu]

Bill Baxter wrote:
> On Fri, Jul 24, 2009 at 2:19 PM, Andrei
> Alexandrescu<SeeWebsiteForEmail at erdani.org> wrote:
>> Jarrett Billingsley wrote:
>>> On Thu, Jul 23, 2009 at 5:56 PM, Michiel
>>> Helvensteijn<m.helvensteijn.remove at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>> Eldar Insafutdinov wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> from your post:
>>>>>
>>>>> property int length {
>>>>>    get() { return this.len; }
>>>>>    set(newLen) { this.len = newLen; }
>>>>>    void opIncrement() { this.len++; }
>>>>> }
>>>>>
>>>>> I don't think that's flexible to overload every operator to get the best
>>>>> performance. As Walter likes to say the best way should be the most
>>>>> obvious. Besides we forgot that D2 allows to return references, which
>>>>> eliminates the issue.
>>>> If your property really just hides a private member variable, it was
>>>> probably for encapsulation purposes or because you want redundant actions
>>>> to be taken for every access. If you return a reference, you give
>>>> unlimited
>>>> and unrestricted access to that variable with only one call, and you
>>>> might
>>>> as well not have used a property at all.
>>>>
>>>> If your property is derived -- that is, if it doesn't directly mirror a
>>>> variable --, there is no reference to return.
>>>>
>>>> Besides, in D, you can probably use mixins to copy the entire interface
>>>> of a
>>>> type into the property without code duplication.
>>> You're suggesting adding something like 25 operator overloads to every
>>> property.  Can you say "code bloat"?
>>>
>>> Why not just use the following solution, which has been proposed
>>> God-knows-how-many-times and already has precedence in other languages
>>> (like C#)?
>>>
>>> obj.prop op= value;
>>>
>>> Simply becomes:
>>>
>>> obj.prop.set(obj.prop.get op value);
>> I think this would be inefficient in many cases.
> 
> That is true but I also think:
> * probably that is the best that can be achieved automatically.
> * if better can be achieved automatically then the compiler can just
> do that under the hood.  No user code needs to change.
> * set(get op value) probably won't be inefficient in some cases.
> * having a op= b work automatically in an inefficient way is better
> than forcing the users of the code to make the same ineffecient
> transformation in their code manually (which is the status quo of
> property syntax in D).
> 
> So I think how to make a op= b whizzy fast can be decided later.  And
> for now set(get op value) is good enough.

Ok, I got convinced.

Andrei