properties

[Andrei Alexandrescu]

Bill Baxter wrote:
> On Tue, Jul 28, 2009 at 1:49 PM, Andrei
> Alexandrescu<SeeWebsiteForEmail at erdani.org> wrote:
>> aarti_pl wrote:
>>>> What would you do if you were me?
>>>>
>>>> Andrei
>>> You should just accept what others want *although* you don't agree...
>>>
>>> Steve's arguments are very good and convincing, and unfortunately somehow
>>> you don't get them. And I don't see your arguments being superior at all.
>> I do get his arguments. Not being convinced does not mean I don't understand
>> them. You seem to assume that as soon as I understood his arguments I'd
>> automatically agree, so somehow I don't understand them
> 
> I think the expectation is more that you would address or respond to
> his argument rather than making your own argument again.
> 
> Or say something like this:
> The fundamental difference in our viewpoints is that you believe that
> expressing extra semantic information to people who read the code is
> more valuable that saving some typing.  I believe the opposite.
> 
> (feel free to rewrite as you wish)  Then it is clear that you have
> understood his argument and have some idea how and where the
> difference in opinion really comes from.   Simply repeating your
> argument makes it look as though you have not read his.

Well we both repeated our arguments several times :o). And don't forget: 
I don't get to decide. So such a discussion between Steve and me could 
as well be a discussion between any two participants.

I do have accountability for Phobos, and there haven't been huge debates 
about it that I vetoed against, have there?

>>> Sorry for thread hijacking, but such discussions make me want not to use D
>>> any more... I am writing because I still have some hope...
>> D has great features, and probably less warts than most other languages. I
>> understand how you feel, but I'd also hope that realistically your use of
>> the language hinges on a little more than this one issue.
> 
> I don't think it's this one issue he's talking about.  I think the
> issue is an occasionally repeated history of questionable changes in D
> made in the face of strong community opposition.  Like
> foreach_reverse.  Such choices may be perfectly valid, but if you find
> yourself repeatedly not seeing eye-to-eye with the designers of a
> language, you have to wonder if you're in the right language
> community.

I understand. On the other hand, a lot of good things have been done in 
relative silence, which are likely to positively impact code writing 
experience a great deal. They just need some more riping. For example, I 
consider the recently-introduced value range propagation an excellent 
feature and a well-balanced engineering tradeoff. Such a thing *would* 
be the kind of feature that would make me cast an interested eye over a 
language. Finally, a step forward in the always-muddy world of 
fixed-size integer arithmetic. Then probably I'd try value range 
propagation and see the compiler essentially fail for all cases (Walter, 
Walter... I wonder if you had *any* test case for the thing) and then 
give up in frustration.


Andrei