Discussion Thread: DIP 1036--Formatted String Tuple Literals--Community Review Round 1

[Andrei Alexandrescu]

On 9/12/20 9:11 AM, Adam D. Ruppe wrote:
> On Saturday, 12 September 2020 at 12:40:21 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
>> I am legitimately scared at this point.
> 
> Posts like this add nothing of value to the conversation. You should at 
> least say why.

The "why" is in subtext. Apologies if not obvious. It was along the 
lines of:

"Great, so this language feature already wants to serve too many 
masters. Now we have it spawning Sorcerer-Apprentice style. The ultimate 
Deus Ex Machina of language design ever: yet another syntactical 
addition. A tool to be reached for with the highest trepidation, now 
mentioned glibly. I am afraid. I am very afraid."

> But you have to understand there is literally no winning. Provide a 
> convenience feature and people complain it is not composable. Provide a 
> composable feature and people complain it is not convenient. Provide 
> both and get this.

At this point I think a win would be to reject this DIP. I'd rather have 
no interpolation than live with this little monster.

> At a certain point, we'll have to tell one group (or more) "sorry, you 
> lose". Personally, I say we should make it composable and tell everyone 
> else to suck it up and call a function on the result. But I'm trying to 
> be a team player here and at least explore the options before dismissing 
> them.

There may be the opposite view, in which the community tells you to give 
up on this or that or the other facility. It seems to me that that's the 
best mental frame for a DIP writer.

There is also a matter of being able to disagree strongly on something 
without that spilling into the personal. (Something my wife and I very 
much want to do in our own disagreements, with limited but notable 
success.) You and I work together. Steve and I are neighbors of sorts. I 
should be able to look you two in the eye and tell you, "this design 
sucks". And you should be able to tell me (hopefully not in 
retaliation), "autodecoding sucks". And we should all enjoy a drink of 
our choice together same as before.