Parameterized Keywords

Mon Mar 7 19:00:58 PST 2016

On Monday, 7 March 2016 at 20:54:22 UTC, Patience wrote:
> On Monday, 7 March 2016 at 15:09:48 UTC, Lass Safin wrote:
>> On Monday, 7 March 2016 at 05:56:54 UTC, Patience wrote:
>>> int[size] <- creates an integer of size bits.
>>
>> You declare arrays of integers with int[size], you know that, 
>> right?
>
> No, not right. Think again. Get your mind out the gutter. 
> Making your own assumptions about what I am talking about can 
> get you in to trouble. Only in programming languages were 
> int[size] is interpreted as an array does it mean that.
>
>> And I really don't see any useful improvement, that could be 
>> added with this. It would just be wasted efforts.
>
> You sound very intelligent!!! I'm sure glad I asked you before 
> I asked god since you seem to know everything about everything. 
> Thanks for the input! I will simple cease to think about 
> progress from now on since you have decided that no progress 
> can be made.
>
> Thanks again brother!

Now listen up, you retarded piece of gutter slime. You are 
posting a newsgroup for D, a language in which int[N] does indeed 
indicate an array of N ints. If that's too hard for you to grasp, 
may I suggest you take up gardening or DIY lobotomy?

While your first post contained what might be interesting ideas, 
your complete lack of understanding of what might be a fruitful 
debate makes me skeptical of them, you, and the future of the 
entire human race. Congratu-fucking-lations.

You have five ideas in your opening post, with limited 
explanations for two of them.

Let's start with those two, because it's actually possible to 
divine what they do. I'm going to stay within the D universe, 
since I like it here, and it gives us at least some modicum of 
solid ground.

== foreach[?] ==

Where is '?' defined? Is it a property of the object being 
iterated over? Is it a global (dog forbid)? Is it just plain 
magic, and you're too stoned to make a sensible explanation?

'executes only if there are one or more iterations'. Just like 
every fucking other foreach, then. What in Wotan's beard would it 
otherwise do with an empty list? Or does it somehow only run 
once, so as to make programming even easier to grasp?

'checks for nullity'. At what bloody level? Suppose there's a 
foreach[?] (a.b.c.allthefuckingletters.ð.ü) - is every single one 
checked? When does it check? Suppose allthefuckingletters above 
suddenly becomes ñúll - does this thing crash? Turn the universe 
into soup?

== int[size] ==

I'm going to pretend I didn't see this. It's a feature that 
exists for small N in D, C, C++ and probably other languages. 
They're called bitfields and are as old as the mountains (unless 
you're a young-earth creationist, in which case they're older).

So, onto your other ravings:

== for[32] ==

What the bloody fuck is this abomination? Like above, who has the 
power to redefine the number 32? Is this some Smalltalk inspired 
thoughtbleed where I can change the metaclass of the number 32 
and give it new features? Can I make it a prime?

Without any kind of explanation, this thing is just weird. I 
can't for the life of me imagine what it'd do, why anyone'd do 
it, or why anyone would even think it up in the first place.

== switch[alpha] ==

Now we might conceivably be getting somewhere. So this turns 
'switch' into a black box that may or may not behave like you 
expect to, depending on how junior and/or crazy the implementer 
is?

I can imagine implementing faster struct comparisons in switch 
statements, and one might even use this to do some interesting 
ADT stuff. But even then, why do I need to specify the type? It's 
right there in the argument to switch.

== if[x](x < 32) ==

See this? This is what madness is made out of. This thing says 'I 
pretend to compare x to 32, but I'm actually downloading horse 
porn and telling your girlfriend it's yours'. It says 'screw you 
and your boolean logic!'. This thing is literally Stalin reborn 
as Hitler.

See, it's not redefining comparison, it's redefining causality. 
This is quantum computing gone bad. What in the name of 
Shub-Niggurath could this possibly do that isn't bad? At least 
with 'switch' there are optimization possibilities, and maybe 
some ADT stuff. Redefining 'if' is like Grassmann numbers or 
Discordianism. Down this path lies chaos.