Reddit: why aren't people using D?

[Daniel Keep]

Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
> Rainer Deyke wrote:
>> Ary Borenszweig wrote:
>>> Maybe what scares Walter is a whole new syntax for properties. If at
>>> least you could say which functions are properties and which are not,
>>> that would be a small change and it'll make it possible for other
>>> things. Something like:
>>>
>>> int property foo(); // getter
>>> int property foo(int value); // setter
>>
>> My proposal requires no new keywords and no new syntax:
>>
>> int getfoo(); // getter
>> int setfoo(int); // setter
> 
> This is pretty clean, and in keep with the opXxx approach. Actually how
> about defining property foo by defining opGet_foo and opSet_foo.
> 
> Andrei

Actually, if this became the "official" way of doing properties, that
would solve the IDE and debugger issues and (hopefully) the parens thing.

Which leaves only one issue: that writing properties violates DRY.  So I
wrote a basic Property generator.

Full source is here: http://gist.github.com/154755

I know people hate mixins, but this approach would give us
discoverability and a slightly terser syntax, without having to actually
introduce new language syntax.

And maybe if D ends up with enough of these mixins being used as
standard, it'll spur Walter into adding macros.  :D

Examples from the code:

struct S
{
    mixin
    (
        // Default accessor property with automatic private storage.
        Property!(int, "bar")

        // Public read-only w/ auto storage
        ~Property!(int, "baz", null, "private")

        // Public read-only with default
        ~Property!(int, "bop = 42", null, "private")

        // Read-only
        ~Property!(int, "qux", null, "-")

        // Fully custom; no auto storage created
        ~Property!(int, "zyz",
        q{
            return 7;
        },
        q{
            // Note "magic" value argument
            writefln("Set zyz to: %s", value);
        })

        // Fully custom with private setter and auto storage
        ~Property!(int, "gfh",
        q{
            // Public here is optional
            public
            {
                return storage/100;
            }
        },
        q{
            private
            {
                storage = value*100;
            }
        })
    );
}