On Monday, 28 January 2013 at 13:49:14 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu
wrote:
But this gets back to faith-based programming. I associate
"reasoning" with much more rigorous processes.
System-level programming is a lot about faith-based programming.
I.e. you have some faith that "writeln" won't modify some random
functions instructions at run-time, despite it possibly could
have done it. This is very reason to push for idiomatic code and
discipline when working with few million loc of system code -
otherwise things might just blow up from any seemingly innocent
action.
Compiler may help here or may not. Strict and well-defined
property enforcement helps. Lax parens-les chaos leaves you no
place for trust and forces either to spent much more time to
maintain code or resort to verbal project-level restrictions and
external verification tools.
That is why having .length of array as a property that
reallocates is so
horrible.
Well it's worked hasn't it.
If anyone can give me a language with half D features but with
this part done right - I ll switch immediately. I have no other
candidates though and am doomed to sit tight and suffer. Makes me
rage every time I see it though. Recently another example of
wrong property usage was given: range.save
Phobos is kind of fucked up in this regard.
