const?? When and why? This is ugly!

[Piotrek]

Walter Bright wrote:
> "Nobody notices they are immutable, they just work."
> 
> So what is it about immutability that makes strings "just work" in a 
> natural and intuitive manner? The insight is that it enables strings, 
> which are reference types, to behave exactly as if they were value types.
> 
> After all, it never occurs to anyone to think that the integer 123 could 
> be a "mutable" integer and perhaps be 133 the next time you look at it. 
> If you put 123 into a variable, it stays 123. It's immutable. People 
> intuitively expect strings to behave the same way. Only C programmers 
> expect that once they assign a string to a variable, that string may 
> change in place.
> 
> C has it backwards by making strings mutable, and it's one of the main 
> reasons why dealing with strings in C is such a gigantic pain. But as a 
> longtime C programmer, I was so used to that I didn't notice what a pain 
> it was until I started using other languages where string manipulation 
> was a breeze.

I could fall into infinite loop while agreeing with you.

Cheers