"Walter Bright" <[email protected]> wrote in message news:[email protected]... > bearophile wrote: >> Walter Bright: >>> Joel C. Salomon: >>>> To avoid this class of bug, you need a simple way to declare what >>>> the acceptable values for a variable are. >>> Languages have had this capability, but it never caught on. People >>> found it just too tedious. >> >> What? We use ranges of integers in Delphi at work today :-) I have >> even proposed something similar for D twice in the past. (But to be >> precise, I often don't use ranged integral numbers for the purpose >> discussed here). > > I didn't mean nobody liked them or used them. I mean they have not caught > on, despite having been around for 3 decades at least.
There have been precedents where things sat in relative obscurity for decades before finally catching on. Such as many functional-programming concepts, like map/reduce and no-side-effect programming, which have only recently become highly in-vogue. Or Babbage's analytical engine. Of course, I'm not saying it would be easy, just that I wouldn't necessarily rule it out on that alone.
