Code That Says Exactly What It Means

[Peter C]

On Tuesday, 28 October 2025 at 08:37:46 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:
> On 10/27/2025 11:47 PM, Peter C wrote:
>> The internal state of this type, in D, 'automatically' leaks 
>> into the rest of the module.
>
> Yes. If you want to hide the internals of a class, put it in 
> its own module. The "friends" then can no longer access the 
> internals.
>
>
> > So what's the problem then?
>
> Every feature adds complexity. At some point, the language 
> becomes unwieldy, where nobody knows the entire language, and 
> people use only islands of it (see C++). Maintaining a language 
> is always a battle with complexity. Having too many ways to 
> accomplish the same goal is not very desirable.
>
> Your proposal does indeed have merit. But is it a big enough to 
> justify a new keyword, and more documentation? The more pages a 
> language spec has, the fewer people will read it. People love 
> languages that can do a lot with very few pages. You could 
> learn C in an hour reading K+R. I remember when Go was 
> introduced and people loved that they could learn Go in just 
> one lecture.
>
> It needs more to justify it.
>
> P.S. The major driver of the new "editions" feature is to 
> enable us to remove features that do not carry their weight, 
> and that have easy alternatives. It's not that they are useless 
> features. It's just that features should have a big impact. For 
> example, Manu and Timon convinced me that placement new would 
> have a substantial impact on what could be done with D.
>
> P.P.S. I do appreciate the time you took to present your 
> proposal. You've thought it out well. Thank you!

Your position is clear, and I won't push it further.

When a programming language actively and intentionally prevents 
me from being explicit about how the members of my class can be 
accessed, the programming language becomes irrelevant to me.

Taking away a tool that millions of programmers use, it not going 
to get D the audience it 'supposedly' desires.

I can't even do this in D!

// Compile-time visibility tests
unittest
{
    auto acc = new Account(5, "Eve", 400.0, "tok5");

    // Allowed:
    static assert(__traits(compiles, acc.getBalance()));

    // Forbidden (scopeprivate):
    static assert(!__traits(compiles, acc.balance));
    static assert(!__traits(compiles, acc.authToken));
}

I am very fortunate being a C# programmer, as I do not need to 
seek a successor language ;-)

Good luck with the future of your language.