Better branding of -betterC

[Abdulhaq]

On Sunday, 1 November 2020 at 01:26:28 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:
> On 10/31/2020 9:22 AM, Paulo Pinto wrote:
>> On Saturday, 31 October 2020 at 01:57:19 UTC, Walter Bright 
>> wrote:
>>> On 10/29/2020 5:48 AM, Abdulhaq wrote:
>>>> I'm pretty sure that Jai is not mimicking D, also I doubt 
>>>> that Zig is either.
>>>
>>> D popularized CTFE, and other languages followed suit, 
>>> including Jai.
>> 
>> Sorry but that flag belongs to Lisp and Dylan macros, Java 
>> compiler plugins, Java/.NET manipulation of 
>> attributes/annotations
>
> Those are not natively compiled languages, and the compiler is 
> part of the runtime.
>
>> and C++ template meta-programing.
>
> Having implemented a full C++ compiler, I don't agree:
>
> 1. it was discovered as a side effect, not designed
> 2. it does not do iteration
> 3. it only does integers - not floating point, not strings, not 
> pointers
> 4. it cannot allocate memory
> 5. it is incredibly limited
> 6. it cannot call or execute a single C++ function
> 7. C++ template metaprograms are limited to trivial ones, due 
> to fundamental problems with it
>
> and, most tellingly,
>
> 8. C++ has gone on to copy D's CTFE
>
>> D CTFE has definitely a very important value, but not 
>> everything that other languages adopt was created by D.
>
> I did say popularized, not created. To round this out a bit, 
> the C preprocessor can do compile time computation, too, but to 
> compare it to D's CTFE is like comparing the pre-existing 
> electric arc lamp to to Edison's incandescent bulb, and saying 
> the bulb wasn't revolutionary.

I respect both Paulo's and Walter's opinion, but speaking as a 
single data point I think Walter is right here in that D has been 
very influential regarding CTFE in the C universe - I say that as 
someone for whom Lisp was one of the first languages I learnt, 
sitting as a teenager in the library, together with PL/1! I later 
managed to get my hands on an actual physical computer and 
progressed (ha!) to the dizzy heights of BASIC and Z80 assembly. 
Seeing as I'm on the topic, 68000 was a blessing, 1980s C++ was a 
curse, Delphi was a blessing, MFC was a curse, dBase was, 
well...., now we have python, C++11, D, modern Java, all good, 
DHTML, node.js, CSS argh please no. What next we ask ourselves...