Marketing D [ was Re: GCC 4.6 ]

[Walter Bright]

dsimcha wrote:
> I know you're kidding, but ironically you may be right in a way.  Sometimes D
> needs to realize that worse is better.  For example:  The discussion on arbitrary
> cost copy construction.  It's silly to contort half of Phobos to efficiently
> support a paradigm that is only used in a few niche areas and is widely regarded
> as a questionable practice, especially outside of the C++ community.

This is the same argument I used to try and convince Andrei to abandon support 
for arbitrary cost copying.

Similar arguments were made in support of making strings immutable. There were a 
few cases from C++ where people wanted to poke at their strings. But immutable 
strings have so many huge advantages, that supporting rare (and questionable) 
practices is just not worth it.

Another one was eschewing support for the "mutable" C++ keyword - an escape from 
const.

And not allowing an object to be both a floor wax and a desert topping (value 
and a reference) which is allowed in C++.

Multiple inheritance.

I think it is a poor tradeoff to make 95% of the users suffer to support the 
other 5% doing stuff they probably shouldn't be doing anyway. And suffer they 
will, C++ has had agonies that just won't go away trying to make that work.