Improve D's syntax to make it more python like

[Brian Rogoff]

On Friday, 21 March 2014 at 20:43:24 UTC, Mason McGill wrote:
> On Friday, 21 March 2014 at 18:47:49 UTC, Pedro Larroy wrote:
>> Hi
>>
>> As a newcomer to D, I wonder, how difficult would be and would 
>> it be welcome by the D community to have D's syntax with 
>> significant whitespace and without brackets more like python?
>>
>>
>> Thanks.
>
> What draws you to D, if not the syntax?

Definitely not the syntax!

The promise of a relatively high level statically typed language 
with low level control and C/C++ levels of performance. That's 
what I'm looking for with D. I choke down the syntax, telling 
myself "at least it's better than C++".

> If you're looking for a fast, Python-like language, and you 
> don't mind dependence on the CPython runtime, I'd suggest 
> looking into Cython (http://cython.org/).
>
> If you're interested in modern language features and expressive 
> metaprogramming with a Python-like syntax, I'd recommend Julia 
> (http://julialang.org/).

You're wrong about Julia. The syntax is most reminiscent of 
MATLAB and Octave.
Others are wrong comparing Ruby/Perl/whatever to Python, at least 
the syntax.
I find Python syntax very readable, it's the type system and 
semantics of Python that I dislike.

Closest language to D with a Pythonesque syntax is Nimrod, 
nimrod-lang.org
It's author, Araq, sometimes reads this forum.

I believe that Haskell is the most popular statically typed 
language with indentation sensitive syntax. But Haskell is a lazy 
functional language where programming with side effects is more 
difficult. That's not like D.

I doubt there's much interest in a new syntax for D. You may as 
well find or create a different language if it bothers you. I 
empathize, but I'm certain you'd be better off just getting used 
to the existing D syntax.