On Wednesday, 19 June 2013 at 20:05:56 UTC, Jonathan M Davis
wrote:
On Wednesday, June 19, 2013 13:13:54 TommiT wrote:
On Wednesday, 19 June 2013 at 07:12:30 UTC, Jonathan M Davis
wrote:
> [..] But even if you can't, I don't think that it's worth it
> to
> complicate the package attribute any further. [..]
I'd like to quote the TDPL foreword by Walter:
"To the best of my knowledge, D offers an unprecedentedly
adroit
integration of several powerful programming paradigms:
imperative, object-oriented, functional, and meta.
At first blush, it would appear that such a language could not
be
simple. And indeed, D is not a simple language. But I’d argue
that is the wrong way to view a language. A more useful view
is,
what do programming solutions in that language look like? Are D
programs complicated and obtuse, or simple and elegant?"
-Walter Bright
Thus, we shouldn't strive so much to make the language simple
(by
having the simplest possible definition for the 'package'
keyword), but rather, we should try to make programs, which use
modules broken into packages, look simple, elegant and easy to
understand.
Sure, but there's a limit to how much complexity is reasonable,
and every
feature has to pull its own weight. And while I agree that
there are cases
where refactoring packages may cause complications with the
package modifier
specfically giving nested packages access to their parent
packages' package
stuff but not do anything like what you're suggesting, I don't
agree that it's
a big enough deal to merit complicating the package access
level any further.
If it's a problem, then maybe the code just plain needs to be
redesigned
rather than simply shuffled around. If we were really looking
for full power
with rearranging stuff like that, we'd have friend functions
and classes, and D
specifically elected _not_ to go for that level of
complication. And overall,
it's worked great for us thus far.
- Jonathan M Davis
No, we are not hoping to rearrange stuff like that. We are
_forced_
to rearrange stuff like that if we go with your suggestion. With
my suggestion, what I presented as the first attempt at breaking
modules into packages would just work. (in case you actually read
my post)
And no, we don't want friend function, I never said that.
Also, I'm just curious why do you keep saying "we don't want to
complicate the package access specifier any further"? Because
isn't the current specification of the package access specifier
the simplest possible that it could ever be? "Everything under
the same folder has access to symbols labeled package". It takes
just 11 words to define it. You're talking about it like it's
already somehow complicated.
