On Thursday, 24 December 2015 at 16:37:29 UTC, Jacob Carlborg
wrote:
On 24/12/15 02:08, Walter Bright wrote:
This has resurfaced on Reddit:
https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/3xya5v/so_you_want_to_write_your_own_language/
In the comments, about the cluttered syntax. For the
attributes, due to legacy reasons, it seems like D got all the
defaults wrong. System instead of safe, mutable instead of
immutable, not pure instead of pure and so on. We might not be
able to get rid of any attributes but if some of these defaults
were different perhaps it would not be necessary to use so many
attributes all the time.
I know that many here don't agree but personally I think the
language could have less syntax it had AST macros. Some syntax
that is built-in now could be moved to library code in the form
of macros.
I think it depends a lot on your personal preference. For
instance, I am always annoyed about immutable types being forced
upon me (okay, they wouldn't be forced, but I'd have to work to
get rid of them). I like mutable types.
Regarding the AST macros - I simply don't know enough about how
that works in practice to have an opinion. Java doesn't have that
stuff, so I don't know what I am missing :-)
