On 1/28/13 9:06 AM, Dicebot wrote:
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.
But D aims at general-purpose programming with only tidbits of
systems-level code. The pure and @safe features are intended to enable
actual reasoning (in the rigorous sense) on portions of programs or
entire programs.
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.
I understand how you feel though you probably are overstating it. No
language can please everyone, and nobody will be pleased by all aspects
of a language.
Andrei
