float init 0 request

[Dukc]

On Monday, 17 August 2026 at 14:03:46 UTC, Quirin Schroll wrote:
> On Friday, 14 August 2026 at 06:38:02 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:
>> Floats are default initialized to NaN so people will be 
>> coerced to explicitly code what they want the initialized 
>> value to be.
>
> Maybe the next D Edition could require initialization of types 
> that don’t initialize with a value equal to `0`. D’s behavior 
> with these is annoying, because leads to needless debug 
> sessions, and also surprising because no other language that D 
> is similar to does that: C++. C# and Java all 
> default-initialize to `0`. Essentially, character and 
> floating-point types should behave like structs with `@disable 
> this()`.

When done well (like in Haskell or Rust) I also think the best 
default values are no default values.

But that requires it's easy to avoid declaring variables before 
there are valid values for them. IMO it isn't the case in D. The 
language is imperative at its root so there are often cases where 
you want to declare a variable before initialising it. It is 
almost always possible to avoid doing so if you're dogged about 
it, but the cure tends to get worse at times than the disease.

D-style "paranoid" default values are the best option IMO - at 
least for mundane types - when language ergonomics would suffer 
without them. If, with help of future language features, we can 
comprehensively avoid relying the default values some day without 
kludgy tricks, then it's time to do what you suggest.