Signed word lengths and indexes

[Walter Bright]

Simen kjaeraas wrote:
> Walter Bright <newshound1 at digitalmars.com> wrote:
>> bearophile wrote:
>>> Don:
>>>
>>>> Indeed, only a subset of D is useful for low-level development.<
>>>  A problem is that some of those D features (that are often useful in
>>> application code) are actively negative for that kind of development.
>>>
>>>> But D has more close-to-the-metal features than C does.<
>>>  I don't know if those extra D features are enough.
>>
>> Since it has more than C does, and C is used for kernel dev, then it 
>> must be enough.
> 
> I believe the point of Linus (and probably bearophile) was not that C++
> lacked features, but rather it lets programmers confuse one another by
> having features that are not as straight-forward as C. D also has these.

To some extent, yes. My point was that C++ doesn't have a whole lot beyond that 
to offer, while D does.


>> One example of this is transitive immutability. Nobody asked for it. A 
>> lot of people question the need for it. I happen to believe that it 
>> offers a quantum improvement in the ability of a programmer to manage 
>> the complexity of a large program, which is why I (and Andrei) have 
>> invested so much effort in it, and are willing to endure flak over it. 
>> The payoff won't be clear for years, but I think it'll be large.
> 
> I still have problems understanding how someone could come up with the
> idea of non-transitive const. I remember the reaction when I read about
> it being such a great thing on this newsgroup, and going "wtf? Why on
> earth would it not be transitive? That would be useless!" (yes, I was
> not a very experienced programmer).

I don't think the non-transitive const is very useful either, and I think that 
C++ demonstrates that.