On 3/21/2012 7:23 AM, Adam D. Ruppe wrote:
> But, is import unlikely success, or is this just a
> leftover feeling from my massive bias in the early
> days? I have to say it is my bias, since everyone
> else uses import and they all know it is good.

I knew import would be good :-)

It's because I've used languages before with an import, and as a compiler guy, I knew what a kludge #include is. The preprocessor in C/C++ is a crutch to make up for deficiencies in the language.

On 3/21/2012 1:01 AM, Nick Sabalausky wrote:
> Of course, to C++'s credit, its templates (AIUI) weren't really designed for
> metaprogramming, just for generics. The metaprogramming was just a happy
> accident (At least that's my understanding, maybe I'm wrong...)

You're correct. Metaprogramming was an emergent property of C++ templates, and was discovered, not designed.

On 3/21/2012 7:45 AM, Steven Schveighoffer wrote:
> If I had to pick a third, I'd say the omitting parentheses for 1-arg templates
> was something I didn't expect to be as great as it is.

Yes, Andrei was the lone advocate of that for a while. Everyone else pooh-poohed it, including me.

On Wednesday, 21 March 2012 at 17:16:55 UTC, Dmitry Olshansky wrote:
> On 21.03.2012 21:14, F i L wrote:
>> And for my third favorite (in no order), I like custom
>> allocators/deallocators. They're nice for creating "invisible" memory
>> pools:
>
> Sorry to spoil the excitement, but aren't they deprecated?
> [snip]

Come on, really? What's the reason for this? I did here about delete being depreciated, though I guess I didn't make the connection. Why is delete being removed anyways?

I really liked this ability, and I hope that it doesn't completely disappear, even if it's only sugar.

On 3/20/12 2:02 PM, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
> I plan to give a talk at Lang.NEXT
> (http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/Lang-NEXT/Lang-NEXT-2012) with the
> subject above. There are a few features of D that turned out to be
> successful, in spite of them being seemingly unimportant or diverging
> from related consecrated approaches.
>
> What are your faves? I have a few in mind, but wouldn't want to
> influence answers.

It's official: http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/Lang-NEXT/Lang-NEXT-2012/Three-Unlikely-Successful-Features-of-D

Andrei

On 3/21/12 12:14 PM, F i L wrote:
> And for my third favorite (in no order), I like custom
> allocators/deallocators.

They don't exist anymore.

Andrei

On 3/21/12 12:26 PM, Walter Bright wrote:
> On 3/21/2012 7:45 AM, Steven Schveighoffer wrote:
>> If I had to pick a third, I'd say the omitting parentheses for 1-arg
>> templates
>> was something I didn't expect to be as great as it is.
>
> Yes, Andrei was the lone advocate of that for a while. Everyone else
> pooh-poohed it, including me.

I appreciate you implemented it in spite of not finding it compelling.

Andrei

On 3/21/12, Andrei Alexandrescu <SeeWebsiteForEmail@erdani.org> wrote:
> It's official: http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/Lang-NEXT/Lang-NEXT-2012/Three-Unlikely-Successful-Features-of-D

"Go In Three Easy Pieces" followed by "Three Unlikely Successful Features of D".

Conspiracy? :P

"Adam D. Ruppe" <destructionator@gmail.com> wrote in message news:fuxnqnmrskrfqqmhdjws@forum.dlang.org...
>
> Nested functions, auto, and scope guards were the
> three killers in the pre-D1 that roped me in. And
> they rok, oh they rok. But that is "likely success" :)
>

The main thing that grabbed me in the pre-D1 days was the lack of header files in a non-VM systems langauge. Everything else was icing on the cake.

Although, while it wasn't a major selling point in and of itself, the ability to put underscores in numeric literals *really* helped tell me, "Now *this* is a language that's very well thought out and values pragmatism." And *that* was the other main thing about D that grabbed me.

> One that surprised me personally though is import. Indeed,
> import is why I passed over D the first time I looked
> at it (in 2004 IIRC) - I saw "import" and said "gah
> include is fine, eff this Java like poo..
>

Heh, really? I started getting tired of C++ around 2002-ish, and around the same time, some college courses I was taking were introducing me to Java. I was never a fan of Java overall, and there's a lot about it I always *hated*, but the lack of header files was one thing that *did* really impress me about Java (the other things were reference semantics for classes and GC). It was enough that, at the time, I considered it a reasonable alternative to C++ for things that didn't need number crunching, high performance or low-level access - at least until I discovered C# and D (eventually I got tired of C#'s limitations, too).

"F i L" <witte2008@gmail.com> wrote in message news:fnlcdpyemasuaomabxxl@forum.dlang.org...
> On Wednesday, 21 March 2012 at 17:16:55 UTC, Dmitry Olshansky wrote:
>> On 21.03.2012 21:14, F i L wrote:
>>> And for my third favorite (in no order), I like custom allocators/deallocators. They're nice for creating "invisible" memory pools:
>>
>> Sorry to spoil the excitement, but aren't they deprecated? [snip]
>
> Come on, really? What's the reason for this? I did here about delete being depreciated, though I guess I didn't make the connection. Why is delete being removed anyways?
>
> I really liked this ability, and I hope that it doesn't completely disappear, even if it's only sugar.

There's a new custom allocator system being worked on. And there's already emplace, which (I imagine) is a key component of it.