On 3/17/2013 3:06 AM, Russel Winder wrote:
On the other hand "creeping featurism" can be a bad thing. Isn't the
mantra "small language, large (properly indexed) library"?
It can be a bad thing, no doubt about it. On the other hand:
When I was in London for the 2010 ACCU (when the volcano stranded me there), I
took a chance to tour the Belfast cruiser sitting in the Thames. One interesting
aspect of it was the ship's machine shop.
It was full of carefully selected machine tools. It was pretty clear to me that
an expert machinist could quickly and accurately make or repair about anything
that broke on that ship.
Sure, you can make do with fewer, more general purpose machines. But it'll take
you considerably longer, and the result won't be as good. For example, I've used
electric drills for years. I was never able to get it to drill a hole perfectly
perpendicular. I finally got a drill press, and problem solved. Not only is it
far more accurate, it's much faster when you've got a lot of holes to drill.
I prefer to view D as a fully equipped machine shop with the right tools for the
right job. Yes, it will take longer to master it than a simpler language. But
we're professionals, we program all day. The investment of time to master it is
trivial next to the career productivity improvement.
And as for the library, yes that is crucial. A large part of D's feature set is
there to enable more powerful libraries, such as the language support for
ranges, and the language support for library-defined garbage collection.
