Rust and D

[Peter Alexander]

On Saturday, 29 September 2012 at 12:09:35 UTC, Thiez wrote:
> Would you agree D would be better if it had those features?

Maybe. Maybe not. It's irrelevant.


> How about we rephrase to something less inflammatory:
>  [Go programmer]: I prefer not to use D because it doesn't have 
> channels.
>  [Lisp programmer]: I prefer not to use D because it doesn't 
> have homoiconicity.
>  [Haskell programer]: I prefer not to use D because it doesn't 
> have full type inference.
>
> Suddenly they all seem like perfectly acceptable arguments. If 
> a person really likes/needs a certain language feature, then 
> surely that is a good reason to reject a language that does not 
> have this feature?

If the person has not even tried the language then no, I still do 
not think those are valid reasons to reject a language.


> Many people like generics. Go doesn't have them. So why get 
> angry if these people reject Go?

I like ice cream. Vegetables don't contain ice cream. So why get 
angry if I don't try vegetables?

Ok, so there's no reason to get angry, but I'd be an idiot to 
follow that logic.

The parallel is that I would consider it unhealthy to dismiss a 
language without trying it just because it lacks a feature that 
you happen to like. It may have something else that you like even 
more, or you may even find that the *lack* of a feature actually 
makes the language simpler and more expressive in ways you 
couldn't imagine (e.g. D's lack on inner struct pointers makes 
things significantly simpler).