> OK, I think that it will be enough to add a Phobos function like this (what's the right Phobos module to put it?) (why isn't this @trusted?) (why isn't this returning a T*?):
>
>
>> ref T uninitializedAlloc(T)() @system pure nothrow
>> {
>>    return *cast(T*)GC.malloc(T.sizeof);
>> }

https://issues.dlang.org/show_bug.cgi?id=13859

Bye,
bearophile

On 12/12/2014 11:42 AM, bearophile wrote:
> Martin Nowak:
>
> OK, I think that it will be enough to add a Phobos function like this
> (what's the right Phobos module to put it?)

Did you just volunteer to make a pull :)?
As usual, having a problem to find the right place myself.
Would put it close to uninitializedFill which lives in std.algorithm, yuck.
BTW, if anyone knows where initOnce should go, I'd be glad to hear.
https://github.com/D-Programming-Language/phobos/pull/2664#issuecomment-66242464

> (why isn't this @trusted?)

Can't be trusted because it returns a heap allocated struct that might contain uninitialized pointers. You could be more precise and make an overload for plain value types.

> (why isn't this returning a T*?):
>
>
>> ref T uninitializedAlloc(T)() @system pure nothrow
>> {
>>     return *cast(T*)GC.malloc(T.sizeof);
>> }

Yeah, that should return a pointer.

On 12/11/2014 10:34 PM, Walter Bright wrote:
>
> D already does this. It's been said before, Jonathan is reinventing D,
> piece by piece :-)

What does that mean, it's been said?
Didn't anyone actually try to tell him about D?

On Friday, 12 December 2014 at 11:58:04 UTC, Martin Nowak wrote:
> On 12/11/2014 10:34 PM, Walter Bright wrote:
>>
>> D already does this. It's been said before, Jonathan is reinventing D,
>> piece by piece :-)
>
> What does that mean, it's been said?
> Didn't anyone actually try to tell him about D?

Actually he dismisses D in his first video for being too much
like C++.

On Thursday, 11 December 2014 at 16:57:35 UTC, bearophile wrote:
> Jonathan Blow, Programming Language Demo #2:
>
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-UPFH0eWHEI
>
> https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/2oyg5e/jonathan_blow_dec_10_programming_language_demo_2/
>
> ------------------
>
> He shows a way to not initialize a struct that has specified values. In D it could be:
>
> struct Vec { float x = 1, y = 5, z = 9; }
>
> auto v = new Vec(void);
> auto av = new Vec[10] = void;
> auto av2 = new Vec[10] = Vec(0, 0, 0);
>
> ------------------
>
> He suggests a way to optionally specify the type of array indexes. In a D-like syntax it could be:
>
> enum N = 10;
> float[N : ushort] a1;
> float[: ushort] a2;
>
> My point of having this in D is to optionally increase strictness of the array indexes, to avoid some bugs when you handle many arrays.
>
> ------------------
>
> He suggests something like a @noinline attribute.
>
> Bye,
> bearophile

It would be nice, if you gave a real world example and explained why you need this feature and whether the problem is general enough to turn it into a feature of the language.

I sometimes think "Wouldn't it be nice to have feature X now!" only to find out it is already there. This, or I realize the code is flawed somewhere else and I can sort it out by fixing the flawed code.

I'm sometimes tempted to demand a feature, but then I realize that the problem is so specific that it would be ridiculous to demand a language feature for a problem that is specific only to my problem. It reminds me of laws. At the beginning laws cover general cases (theft, fraud whatever), then people demand a specific law for theft after 5 o'clock in winter when the moon is full as opposed to theft in summer when the sky is blue. And there was this guy who got robbed in autumn ...

On 12/12/2014 01:15 PM, Tobias Pankrath wrote:
> Actually he dismisses D in his first video for being too much
> like C++.

What do you usually do when learning a new programming language?
Right, write a small program. Apparently he ruled out all 3 candidates by looking at the front page of their website, so clearly this guy wants to write his own "personal perfect" programming language, be it for fun or for fame.
I think every good C++ programmer ends up in this situation at some point and using an existing language will always feel like a compromise.
And who wouldn't have thought of writing a better D ;).

Anyhow, he seems to be a somewhat smart guy and we could really make use of one that has enough time to write a compiler. Maybe we could talk him into giving D a more in-depth look. He might have missed the pragmatic in "It pragmatically combines efficiency, control, and modeling power, with safety and programmer productivity.".
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TH9VCN6UkyQ#t=1626
But to understand how much more productive D is in comparison to C++, he'd have to actually code something.

-Martin

On Friday, 12 December 2014 at 11:58:04 UTC, Martin Nowak wrote:
> On 12/11/2014 10:34 PM, Walter Bright wrote:
>>
>> D already does this. It's been said before, Jonathan is reinventing D,
>> piece by piece :-)
>
> What does that mean, it's been said?

He means he said it before: :)

http://forum.dlang.org/post/m33eun$1ki4$1@digitalmars.com

On Friday, 12 December 2014 at 11:58:04 UTC, Martin Nowak wrote:
> On 12/11/2014 10:34 PM, Walter Bright wrote:
>>
>> D already does this. It's been said before, Jonathan is reinventing D,
>> piece by piece :-)
>
> What does that mean, it's been said?
> Didn't anyone actually try to tell him about D?

I did in a quite long e-mail. Here is his answer:

> I agree that D is a much better language than C++ but I don't believe it is quite the right thing. I am going to keep doing talks, and the further talks will go into more language specifics, and I think you'll see that eventually it shapes up into a pretty different language.

> That said, I do think D has a lot of value, and if the world switched over to D from C++ tonight, I think everyone would be a lot better off.

> I am well aware of how much work it is to make a new language and get it adopted. It is a big job for sure! But, part of my goal is to rally the big game development community to do that big job.

I feel like he is a very capable programmer that simply want to do his thing, like many of us do :)

On 12/12/2014 1:58 AM, bearophile wrote:
> My point was to optionally define built-in arrays with a strongly typed indexing
> (where the strongly typed index can be defined with a better version of
> Typedef!()), as I've tried to explain in that post.

All you have to do is define your own array type as a struct wrapper around an array, then overload the [] operator. No need for new language features.

On 12/12/2014 3:57 AM, Martin Nowak wrote:
> On 12/11/2014 10:34 PM, Walter Bright wrote:
>>
>> D already does this. It's been said before, Jonathan is reinventing D,
>> piece by piece :-)
>
> What does that mean, it's been said?
> Didn't anyone actually try to tell him about D?
>

I've emailed him about it. He is having a great time designing his own language, though, and of course I can understand that :-)