Does D have too many features?

[Paulo Pinto]

Am 29.04.2012 10:42, schrieb Timon Gehr:
> On 04/29/2012 08:31 AM, Paulo Pinto wrote:
>> Am 28.04.2012 20:47, schrieb Walter Bright:
>>> Andrei and I had a fun discussion last night about this question. The
>>> idea was which features in D are redundant and/or do not add significant
>>> value?
>>>
>>> A couple already agreed upon ones are typedef and the cfloat, cdouble
>>> and creal types.
>>>
>>> What's your list?
>>
>> - two different ways of creating function pointers is confusing
>> (function and delegate)
>>
>> I understand the reasoning, but makes one think all the time when
>> to use what.
>>
>
> 'delegate' is more powerful, 'function' is more efficient. If you don't
> want to think about it, just use 'delegate'. I'd rather see 'function'
> implicitly convert to 'delegate' than to have it gone. D can be used for
> systems programming after all!

That is what I mean. The compiler could make the distinction between 
function and delegate itself.

I am not arguing to remove the feature, rather to have the compiler 
check it for me. Surely it can see if I am passing the delegate to D 
code or extern C/C++ code and act accordingly.

>
>> - sometimes D code looks like template and mixins gone mad
>> While I do appreciate the power, it can be quite confusing to try
>> to understand what the code does. Specially with the lack of support
>> in mixin's debugging
>>
>
> pragma(msg, ...) ?

Too low level?

>
>>
>> - misuse of enum to declare constants
>> I prefer that the use of const would be possible
>>
>
> const infects the type and const-qualified data can exist at runtime, so
> it is not possible.

Yeah, but it brings me back bad memories from the early days, when C++ 
compilers did not fully support C++98, and we had to resort to the enum 
trick to create constants.

>
>> - conditional compilation is hard to follow without syntax highlighting
>> Other languages with conditional compilation make it easier to follow
>> what is what. e.g. Turbo Pascal/Delphi, C#, Modula-3, Ada
>>
>
> That is not a language issue.

How come?

In the languages mentioned above, the conditional compilation stands out 
in clear text that is doing something at compile time.

In D you need to be aware which statements are compile time and which 
are not.

Not a big deal to argue about, but easy trap for D newbies.

--
Paulo