DIP54 : revamp of Phobos tuple types

[Jakob Ovrum]

On Monday, 23 December 2013 at 01:39:26 UTC, Dicebot wrote:
> http://wiki.dlang.org/DIP54

Are you seriously suggesting we change the auto-expanding 
behaviour of template argument lists? This is going to cause the 
biggest code breakage since D2, for the niche benefit of having 
lists that don't automatically expand.

This DIP makes several unfounded assumptions. It assumes that the 
semantics of template argument lists are inherently hard to 
learn, and that removing the auto-expanding aspect will make them 
easier to learn. It assumes that non-auto-expanding lists provide 
a significant usability boost, and claims that it enables 
previously impossible algorithms. It claims to be a compromise 
derived from several previous discussions (without citing any), 
but the only consensus I remember is that we have a naming 
problem. I don't remember anyone but you asking for non-expanding 
lists *in the language*, which I regard a red herring.

I see no proof provided for any of this.

I hate to say this, but it looks a lot like your personal agenda 
against auto-expanding lists is tacked onto and conflated with 
the naming problem, which I think is disingenuous.

> This is follow-up of several hot discussion threads that have 
> happened several months ago. It has become pretty clear that 
> there is no good way out of existing situation and least bad 
> needs to be picked just to move forward (because it still be 
> better than current horrible one)

I don't agree. I think we'd be in good shape just by fixing the 
naming problem, which is a much less controversial change.

> Linked proposal was discussed in short e-mail conversation with 
> Andrei (with silent observation with Walter) and is mostly 
> pre-approved. I am interested in general opinion of community 
> and suggestions for any smaller tweaks before starting to work 
> on pull requests.

Please don't pull the argument-by-authority card. Private 
conversations that affect all of us like this need to die in a 
fire. We should consider this kind of thing the equivalent of 
tainted evidence.