std.compress

[Walter Bright]

On 6/4/2013 9:44 PM, Max Samukha wrote:
> On Tuesday, 4 June 2013 at 18:46:49 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:
>> On 6/4/2013 11:43 AM, Timothee Cour wrote:
>>> writing generic code.
>>> same reason as why we prefer:
>>> auto y=to!double(x) over auto y=to_double(x);
>>
>> The situations aren't comparable. The to!double case is parameterizing with a
>> type, the compress one is not. Secondly, compress(lzw) does ABSOLUTELY NOTHING
>> but turn around and call lzw. It adds nothing.
>
> That "absolutely" based on limited personal experience is the biggest D's problem.

I've seen an awful lot of abstractions over the years that provided zero value.

You need to provide a compelling use case to justify another layer of 
complexity. "generic code" is not a compelling use case. It's already generic.

Note how these components are to be used:

     src.lzwCompress.copy(dst);

Your proposal is:

     src.compress(lzw).copy(dst);

I.e. zero value, as so far all compress() does is call lzw().

The whole point of range-based pipeline programming is you can just plug in 
different components. There is no demonstrated use case for adding another layer.

I am actually wrong in saying it has zero value. It has negative value :-)