Vision for the D language - stabilizing complexity?

[Ola Fosheim Grøstad via Digitalmars-d]

On Sunday, 10 July 2016 at 11:21:49 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:
> On 7/9/2016 7:44 PM, Ola Fosheim Grøstad wrote:
>> On Saturday, 9 July 2016 at 08:39:10 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:
>>> Seems that in order to make it useful, users had to extend 
>>> it. This
>>> doesn't fit the criteria.
>>
>> Scheme is a simple functional language which is easy to extend.
>
> If they have to extend it, it isn't Scheme anymore.

Uh, well in that case there is no C++ at all. And we might as 
well say that gdc and ldc aren't D compilers either.

> The original Pascal, which you said you'd never used. I have.

I've used the subset, but not Wirth's original. Not that this is 
an argument for anything.

>> So I don't think I agree with your definition of "useful".
>
> Try and write a program in Wirth's Pascal that reads a 
> character from the keyboard.

D has no _language_ support for I/O, not sure what the point is.

>>> What programmers think of as "intuitive" is often a 
>>> collection of
>>> special cases.
>> I think I would need examples to understand what you mean here.
>
> Dangling else is a classic.
>
> < > for template parameters in C++.
>
> infix notation

Ok. Those are syntactic conventions. Does not affect the language 
design as such.