On Tuesday, 5 February 2013 at 21:59:53 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu
wrote:
Just to make sure: this is about
http://forum.dlang.org/thread/[email protected].
Language design is a subjective topic. With time I have learned
it's best to not comment very much about it. I have created
dozens, maybe hundreds of tidbits of language design and
invariably I believe they had obvious merits and negligible
drawbacks. The confidence in the quality of my own language
designs has decayed exponentially over the years.
I'm telling this to put in perspective my following comment. I
think it's awesome that work like yours is discussed and
refined in this group. At the same time my opinion is that the
design is not appropriate for us. It changes semantics of
existing code and fosters a cross-talk between subcomponents
that has not been time tested. It is complicated in
implementation for a benefit that's not properly motivated. At
the top level it solves the wrong problem. As stated: "The
challenge is to do better, both in terms of functionality and
in terms of syntax, than his proposal: ..." The actual
challenge is to make properties work with maximum backward
compatibility, minimal surprise, best integration with the rest
of the language, and maximum of benefits.
Andrei
Okay. But I just want to be clear that you are saying what I am
reading, which is that I came to this language too late to really
make a difference in it.
