On 3/14/2015 2:26 AM, Russel Winder via Digitalmars-d wrote:
On Fri, 2015-03-13 at 00:22 -0700, Walter Bright via Digitalmars-d
wrote:
On 3/12/2015 11:57 PM, Russel Winder via Digitalmars-d wrote:
How about lining up some features for removal.
Easier said than done. I've proposed a couple things for removal, but got a lot
of pushback. Some things have been successfully removed:
Pushback can be ignored, and indeed should in some cases.
Not ignored. But sometimes I do override others' judgement in the interest of
doing what I believe is best. Somebody has to make decisions on controversial
issues.
(I had proposed removing the 'lazy' storage class.)
. octal literals
C should be incinerated for the 0777 abomination. At least 0o777 can
work reasonably.
Even better:
octal!0777
The point is, with a library abstraction the core language can be simplified.
D's ability to create user defined literals largely ends the pressure to make
more complicated and specialized core language literals.
. builtin complex numbers
Electronics folk love these. Many people use Python exactly for this
type.
Complex numbers are still available, but as a library type, which is not
inferior to the (former) builtin type.
Has any language been successful at abandoning their user base (i.e. existing
code)? Going from D1 to D2 nearly destroyed D. I'm not eager to try that again.
The war is being played out in the Python 2/3 arena certainly.
Interestingly though there are fewer and fewer Python 2 hold outs. Their
holding out has made Python 3 change a little, and for the better in my
view – even though I refuse to write any Python 2 specific code.
It's a good example. Didn't Perl 6 go through a paroxysm, too? But not so
successfully.
