On Thursday, 23 August 2018 at 10:41:03 UTC, Jonathan M Davis
wrote:
Languages pretty much always get more complicated over time,
and unless we're willing to get rid of more stuff, it's
guaranteed to just become more complicated over time rather
than less.
"A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is
nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take
away." -- Antoine de Saint-Exupery
I think that's actually a mistranslation from what he actually
said, but it's still quite good.
I think that's a important point of focus. We should be trying
to get rid of stuff. It's one of the reasons I've been trying to
move forward on some of the deprecations. Once the decision to
deprecate is made it takes at least 2 years to get it done. The
longer we wait, the longer we have to carry its baggage and risk
its poor interaction with new features.
It's a good question to ask: What can we get rid of?
I know it's radical, but I'd like to see if we could enhance
structs a little and get rid of classes and interfaces. See
https://theartofmachinery.com/2018/08/13/inheritance_and_polymorphism_2.html for what I mean.
Mike
