Just sayin', fwiw...

[FeepingCreature]

On Thursday, 16 May 2019 at 03:11:15 UTC, Nick Sabalausky 
(Abscissa) wrote:
> Not to beat anyone over the head or push for any change (I know 
> not to do that 'round these parts these days ;) )...but I've 
> noticed a very frequent pattern in my own usage of D:
>
> 1. I write a bunch of code.
> 2. I take advantage of ranges and std.algorithm and think I'm 
> being all hip and cool and awesome.
> 3. I hit compile.
> 4. Something in std.algorithm fails to find a matching overload.
...
> 10. I toss in ".byCodeUnit", it works, I go about the rest of 
> my day.
>
> And I'm a D veteran. I've been using D since before v1.0 (yes, 
> pre-D1). I can't even imagine how painful this would be for a D 
> newcomer.
>
> To be clear...not to badger, not to request, not to hope for D 
> to change for the better on any matter that isn't 
> earth-shatteringly large (I know better by now), I'm just 
> sayin' for the sake o' sayin' : It really *wound* be nice to be 
> able to (even optionally) get SOME kind of clear notice anytime 
> I've failed to implicitly CHOOSE between decode or no-decode.
>

This is not a problem with string autodecoding, this is a problem 
with the utterly atrocious error reporting where if the compiler 
fails to find an overload match due to template constraints, it 
gives you precisely zero indication what the actual root cause is.