Why is std.algorithm so complicated to use?

[Timon Gehr]

On 07/10/2012 12:53 AM, Jonathan M Davis wrote:
> On Monday, July 09, 2012 23:00:39 Timon Gehr wrote:
>> On 07/09/2012 10:46 PM, bearophile wrote:
>>> Jacob Carlborg:
>>>> import std.algorithm;
>>>> import std.range;
>>>>
>>>> struct Foo {}
>>>>
>>>> auto f = Foo();
>>>> auto foos = [f];
>>>> auto foo = foos.map!(x =>  "foo");
>>>> auto bar = foo.chain("bar");
>>>
>>> I suggest to always compile with "-wi -property".
>>
>> Both -property and -w/-wi are broken and their only merit so far is to
>> break my builds for no reason.
>>
>> -wi spits out about 4000 lines of false (duplicate) warnings when run
>> against my code base.
>
> I'd actually argue the opposite. I think that they should be the normal
> behavior, and if you're getting a ton of warnings, I'd argue that you have a
> ton of problems that need fixing.

Nonsense. I explicitly expressed that the warnings I get are bare of
value.

> dmd is generally good about not having
> useless warnings.

case 0,1: // warning: switch fallthrough (nonsense)
case 2,3:

This is the only kind of warning I get (clearly a bug, and it is 
reported). After that, the compiler spits out ~4000 lines of completely
unrelated internal AST from a different module.

> Now, with the current version of github, it unfortunately
> seems to spit out a bunch of duplicate messages for the same error/warning
> with templates in a number of cases, and _that_ should be fixed, but the
> warnings themselves are generally solid and indicators of a real problem.
>
> And as I've expressed in the past, I think that -property is very much doing
> the right thing and that not strictly enforcing properties is horrible,

Language design shouldn't be based on statements like "I think it is
horrible". There is nothing objective in it.

> but obivously we're in disagreement on that.
>

What we disagree on is what is called a property and what is called a
function call. I am ok with disallowing function calls of the form
function = argument.