On Monday, 28 January 2013 at 21:43:25 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu
wrote:
On 1/28/13 4:32 PM, Dicebot wrote:
On Monday, 28 January 2013 at 18:43:19 UTC, Andrei
Alexandrescu wrote:
Arrays, however, will
not suffer at all from switching to array.resize(42) syntax
from
array.length = 42 syntax.
Well I think this is a given now. So again - time to adjust
preferences :o).
My feeling is that the array.length getter/setter problem is
affected by the perceived assymetry between the getter and the
setter operation.
Even more, that feeling is exacerbated by the involvment of a
canonical type. People expect some expensive background
operations for user-defined, complicated types, but not for
canonical types. Properties too, are plagued by this, but at
least there the choice is explicitly marked and assumed.
As for the a=b bigInts vs the array.length=5 problem: the former
operation affects the content of a and b. The latter not only
affects the content of array.length, but also the very content of
array itself. I know the border is thin, however, it exists at
the psychological level, since many will gladly accept
reallocation in a=b, but not in array.length=5.
Maybe is just the power of habit. Maybe not.
