On Wednesday, 19 June 2013 at 22:40:47 UTC, Jonathan M Davis
wrote:
On Thursday, June 20, 2013 00:21:45 TommiT wrote:
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.
No, it's not complicated, but the lanugage as a whole is
complicated, and any
new feature that's added to it increases its complexity. As
such, it needs to
pull its weight, and I really don't believe that that's the
case here. I just
don't think that complicating the package access modifier any
further is worth
the gain. There is some gain, but I think that it's ultimately
quite small,
and I'd much prefer that access modifiers stay simple.
Obviously, you're
entitled to think that the extra complexity is worth it, but I
don't agree.
- Jonathan M Davis
You're willing to add extra complexity and inconvenience to
programming in D just in order to keep the language specification
simple. I don't think it's a good trade-off. Learning the complex
details of language is a one-time cost that all programmers must
pay when they start with the language. Whereas complexity and
inconvenience in actually programming with the language is a
running cost and may be a source of bugs as well. The running
cost should clearly over-weight the one-time cost here.
