This question is (I've just realized) the primary concern I have
about the future of D (and hence whether it's worth depending on).
I looked at the 2015H1 vision, and don't see an answer to this
there.
So, an example to illustrate the question: In a recent thread, I
saw code that used an "alias parameter". I haven't seen this
before. Or have I? I'm not really sure, because:
* "alias" is a keyword I've seen before.
* type inference (which I like in general), means that maybe this
is the "formal" way to specify whatever it means, and people
usually just leave it out.
Now, I'm not asking about making a breaking language change, and
I'm not exactly complaining about new language features. I'm more
thinking about when someone who knows all the current features,
tries to read code: How hard is the language for that human to
parse? The more different meanings a keyword has (consider
"static"), and ditto for attributes, the harder it is to parse.
Sorry for the novel, but now I can ask my question: What is the D
leadership's vision for how the language will evolve with respect
to this metric (ease of parseability by a human already well
versed in the latest version of the language)?
I ask because I see lots of discussions that seem to be proposing
a change that will incrementally increase this difficulty. Over
time, that would significantly change the language, possibly
approaching C++'s level of difficulty, which I'll call "many
bridges too far". And C++ seems to have given up fighting this
(e.g. I like the idea of the C++ "uniform initialization" and
"initializer list" features, but the way their syntax interacts
with old-school syntax is frustrating.)
Thanks!
