Walter, I'm sorry to hear your frustration on this issue of the
error caret, and the lack of recognition you got for your dmc
implementation of that concept.
For what it's worth the following is my opinion:
- I think I first met an error caret in the javac compiler,
around 2000. I found it very nice and useful. My positive
experience was not preceded by any "marketing" of that feature,
so I think we can conclude that my enjoyment was genuine.
- When clang added nice error diagnostics in general (compared to
GCC at the time) and the caret in particular that helped shape my
perception of that compiler in a positive light, whatever the
actual technical merits of that compiler may be.
- In general I think dmd is quite a good compiler but I regularly
mumble to myself "hmm, the compiler could have provided better
diagnostics for this error I committed". I can start compiling a
list of those errors with less than great error messages, if
that's useful.
- Based on my experience with javac and clang, providing a caret
(and ranges around the offending expressions, as in clang) is
very useful *to me*, and I would be very pleased to see them on
the D compilers, even if that information was not present in the
debugger, so as not to regress compiler performance.
