On Monday, 31 March 2014 at 03:25:11 UTC, Manu wrote:
On 31 March 2014 12:21, Walter Bright
<[email protected]> wrote:
On 3/30/2014 6:33 PM, Manu wrote:
This is an interesting idea. Something I never thought of,
and I think I
like it!
Frankly, I don't know why you use classes at all. Just use
structs.
Reference types are very useful. Most programmers are familiar
with this
workflow, and it's a convenient way of modelling lots of
problems.
I do find myself using a lot more struct's in D though, but
that doesn't
void the traditional approach. And I also maintain that these
things are
important particularly as a bridge for new D users.
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.
Again and again I find myself reluctantly turning a struct into a
class simply to get the reference semantics. Sure I could find
work arounds and use * and & etc., but it just does not feel
right, because hacks should only be the last resort, not
something that is all over the place in your code. As has been
mentioned earlier in this thread, these things often come back
and bite you and all of a sudden it doesn't seem "so clever"
anymore. On the other hand, I don't think that we should change
the language, because of random annoyances that might partly be
down to our design decisions taken earlier in the code.
