What Makes A Programming Language Good

[Jesse Phillips]

Jim Wrote:

> Walter Bright Wrote:
> > Forcing the module name to match the file name sounds good, but in practice it 
> > makes it hard to debug modules. What I like to do is to copy a suspicious module 
> > to foo.d (or whatever.d) and link it in explicitly, which will override the 
> > breaking one. Then, I hack away at it until I discover the problem, then fix the 
> > original.
> 
> 
> This would admittedly impose some constraints, but I think it would ultimately be worth it. It makes everything much clearer and creates a bunch of opportunities for further development.

I don't see such benefit. First off, I don't see file/module names not matching very often. Tools can be developed to assume such structure exists which means more incentive to keep such structure, I believe rdmd already makes this assumption.

It also wouldn't be hard to make a program that takes a list of files, names and places them into the proper structure.

> I'd create a branch (in git or mercury) for that task, it's quick and dirt cheap, very easy to switch to and from, and you get the diff for free.

Right, using such tools is great. But what if you are like me and don't have a dev environment set up for Phobos, but I want to fix some module? Do I have to setup such an environment or through the file in a folder std/ just do some work on it?

I don't really know how annoying I would find such a change, but I don't think I would ever see at as a feature.