properties

[Bill Baxter]

On Tue, Jul 28, 2009 at 2:35 PM, Andrei
Alexandrescu<SeeWebsiteForEmail at erdani.org> wrote:
> Bill Baxter wrote:
>>
>> On Tue, Jul 28, 2009 at 1:49 PM, Andrei
>> Alexandrescu<SeeWebsiteForEmail at erdani.org> wrote:
>>>
>> 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.

That's not quite true.  You do talk to Walter more than Steve does.
And I think everyone can guess that if you don't get convinced there's
no way Walter will be.  Convincing you isn't sufficient, but it is
necessary.

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

You have indeed made a good effort there.  It was iffy for a while
with the head/toe thing, but you did come around. :-)


>> 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.

There's probably a connection there with human nature's way of
remembering affronts much more clearly and dearly than compliments.

--bb