On Monday, 31 March 2014 at 04:48:20 UTC, Manu wrote:
On 31 March 2014 13:32, Adam D. Ruppe
<[email protected]> wrote:
On Monday, 31 March 2014 at 03:25:11 UTC, Manu wrote:
I also feel quite dirty using pointers in D where there is a
dedicated
reference type available. I don't want * and & to appear
everywhere in my D
code.
structs can pretty easily be reference types too:
struct RefType {
struct Impl {
// put all the stuff in here
}
Impl* impl;
alias impl this;
// add ctors and stuff that new the impl
}
And you think this is 'cool'?
The amount of boilerplate required makes C++ look neat and
tidy. You've
also truncated it significantly.
class RefType
{
// put all the stuff in here
}
Why would anyone want to do all that crap? The reason is to
overcome the
limitations/restrictions of class... so just fix class?
Or maybe improve struct, so that boilerplate can disappear.
Perhaps add a distinct ref type like MS did with '^' pointers
in WinRT and
managed C++?
Either way, for my money, that code might appeal to a D nerd
(because you
'can'!), but I find it acutely distasteful code otherwise.
No junior programmer would/should understand all that
intuitively, and I
would be embarrassed to show that to a non-D-user that I was
trying to
convince.
If this pattern is recurring (it seems that it is), then I
think it's clear
sign of a chronic deficiency in D. It should probably be
studied and
addressed. I'm seeing it appear a lot.
I think you're missing the point. D is able to create structs
that work as reference types, as a generic library type. No
novice programmer or new adopter has to understand how they work
in order to use them.
I think there should be a more vanilla reference type (than
NullableRef) in std.typecons in order to address this.
