On Friday, 10 October 2014 at 02:38:42 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:
This has come up before, and has been debated at length.
const is used both as a storage class and as a type
constructor, and is distinguished by the grammar:
const(T) v; // type constructor, it affects the type T
const T v; // storage class, affects the symbol v and the
type of v
In particular,
const T *v;
does not mean:
const(T)* v;
Wait what? Are you saying there is a single case when this:
const T var;
is not identical to this:
const(T) var;
???
I see no point in saying const storage class exists in D2 because
there is no way to observe it because of transitivity of const
qualifier.
(I understand that there's a lot of advocacy lately about
"break my code", but I'm the one who bears the brunt of "you
guys broke my code again, even though the code was correct and
worked perfectly well! D sux.", besides, of course, those poor
souls who have to go fix their code base, and I hear again
about how D is unstable, another Reddit flame-fest about D
being unsuitable because the designers can't make up their
mind, etc.)
Reddit users are not the ones who invest into this language. If
this attitude won't change it is only a matter of time until you
start losing existing corporate users deciding to go with other
language or a fork instead (likely latter).
I am very serious. Being a D user pretty much by definition
implies someone willing to risk and experiment with programming
tools to get a business edge. If costs of maintaing own fork
become lower than regular losses from maintenance overhead from
language quirks it becomes simple pragmatical solution. There is
nothing personal about it.
Consistency and being robust in preventing programmer mistakes is
single most important feature in the long term. @nogc, C++
support, any declared feature - it all means nothing with a
simple necessity to not waste money fighting the language.
In that sense proposed change is _very_ beneficial in ROI terms.
It forces trivial code base adjustment that results in preventing
very common mistake rarely obvious for a newbies. This means a
very real money gains in terms of training and daily mantenance
overhead. Something I don't care much in a personal projects but
will damn appreciate as one caring for success of my employer.
This endless search for the ideal syntax is consuming our time
while we aren't working on issues that matter. (And this change
will consume users' time, too, not just ours.)
Hardly anything matters more than that. Issues like that consume
our time continiously for years, accumulating in wasted days
weeks of worker time. Compared with time needed to adjust even
several MLOC project gain is clear.
#pleasebreakourcode
