On Monday, 26 January 2015 at 15:07:24 UTC, Jonathan M Davis
wrote:
On Monday, January 26, 2015 13:21:54 via Digitalmars-d wrote:
function. So, I
don't think that that particular distinction would work, even
if we could
freely rearrange which attributes had @ and which didn't.
I personally agree that it would be better to remove "@" like you
suggested and leave it for UDAs. Interpreting D code is hard for
tools without a library anyway, so I think the current approach
is unwarranted, and would rather see a more complicated grammar
and parser in favour of usability. D could provide an official
parser/semantic analysis library available for tools (like clang).
The visual noise in D2 is too high IMO, and the reuse of
keywords/symbols for unrelated functionality makes
usability/legibility/reading comprehension worse. I think this
alone is enough to prevent mainstream adoption.
Other languages compensate by having constructs that allow you do
use "keywords" for fieldnames in records. It is a better
strategic move to favour good syntactical usability/legibility
over parsing complexity. Clean context independent mapping
between syntax and semantics is important.
Besides, D really needs to allow the use of common nouns like
"body" in structs (e.g. to implement the HTML DOM)... so a more
wholesome approach to rethinking the D syntax would be welcome.
The D syntax needs rethinking as a whole, not in bits and pieces.
If you are gonna break, make it clean, and make the language easy
to learn.
