January 26, 2012
On 01/25/2012 07:39 PM, Alex Rønne Petersen wrote:
> On 24-01-2012 23:51, Caligo wrote:
>> On Tue, Jan 24, 2012 at 2:45 PM, bearophile<bearophileHUGS@lycos.com>
>> wrote:
>>> Ary Manzana:
>>>
>>>> And also, what's the advantage of the language?
>>>
>>> Its author is a very intelligent person, worth respect. Rust has both
>>> typestates and variable owning, and probably something else too, I
>>> have to study it better. It seems willing to become a direct
>>> competitor of D2.
>>>
>>> Bye,
>>> bearophile
>>
>>
>> Maybe not intelligent enough, otherwise he would join the D development.
>
> That's rather harsh and not much better than swearing religiously by a
> language. Every language has its reasons for existing. (And no, there
> *is no such thing* as a general-purpose language; that assertion simply
> does not hold.)
>
> - Alex

That probably depends how narrow you want the definition of general-purpose to be.
January 28, 2012
On Tuesday, 24 January 2012 at 19:11:09 UTC, Ary Manzana wrote:
> I can't believe people are still creating languages with curly-brace syntax.

I can believe people use Visual Basic crap like python.

> And also, what's the advantage of the language? Having to type "fn" instead of "function" or "def"? Having to type "iface" instead of "interface"?

If you want to write code fast, you need to type less, that's why saving keystrokes is important feature of a modern language. BTW, it's D way to programming too.

> Just look at this:
>
> fn mk_appender(suffix: str) -> fn@(str) -> str {
>   let f = fn@(s: str) -> str { s + suffix };
>   ret f;
> }
>
> YUCK!

This snippet is my first experience with Rust. It surely seems esoteric on the first sight, but it didn't take me long to understand it as you already documented its keywords. Though I don't like these backward declarations.
January 28, 2012
Kagamin wrote:

> If you want to write code fast, you need to type less

This holds as long as one has to _write_ code. Ever heard of speech recognition?

-manfred
January 28, 2012
On Wednesday, 25 January 2012 at 17:40:50 UTC, Alex Rønne Petersen wrote:
> IMO the D community should be willing to look at other languages for ideas and inspiration.

Too late. As C++ proves, legacy is unfixable.
January 28, 2012
On Saturday, 28 January 2012 at 12:38:04 UTC, Manfred Nowak wrote:
> Kagamin wrote:
>
>> If you want to write code fast, you need to type less
>
> This holds as long as one has to _write_ code. Ever heard of speech recognition?

The compiler understands D.
January 28, 2012
On 28-01-2012 16:51, Kagamin wrote:
> On Wednesday, 25 January 2012 at 17:40:50 UTC, Alex Rønne Petersen wrote:
>> IMO the D community should be willing to look at other languages for
>> ideas and inspiration.
>
> Too late. As C++ proves, legacy is unfixable.

No... all identifiers starting with __ and @ are reserved. Therefore, you can introduce plenty of language features still. Often, new features can also be introduced simply by lifting existing restrictions.

- Alex
January 28, 2012
Kagamin wrote:

> The compiler understands D.

... and speech recognition can transform spoken words into written D readable by the compiler.

Ask your manager why you must type your code in a crouded office space instead of narrating it behind a nice acoustically sealed devider.

-manfred
January 28, 2012
> This holds as long as one has to _write_ code. Ever heard of speech
> recognition?

do you acually have some experiences with this method producing code? i have a hard time to believe "speech recognition" is faster than typing, e.g. i can press two keys (altgr-7) quicker than saying "computer, right open curly brace." or three keys (9dd) instead of "computer, delete 9 lines from the current. computer, please?" :)

January 28, 2012
On Saturday, 28 January 2012 at 19:11:26 UTC, Mirko Pilger wrote:
>> This holds as long as one has to _write_ code. Ever heard of speech
>> recognition?
>
> do you acually have some experiences with this method producing code? i have a hard time to believe "speech recognition" is faster than typing, e.g. i can press two keys (altgr-7) quicker than saying "computer, right open curly brace." or three keys (9dd) instead of "computer, delete 9 lines from the current. computer, please?" :)

If you were dictating to the computer you wouldn't have needed to make all those corrections. It is just like talking to a human, the output would be what you meant instead of what you said.
January 28, 2012
Mirko Pilger wrote:

> computer, please?

You discovered the humor in my question.

-manfred