On Tuesday, 13 September 2022 at 21:04:51 UTC, Steven Schveighoffer wrote:
> Same thing with binary. It allows me to express *certain numbers* without thinking or figuring too hard. Like building a number that has n consecutive bits set (i.e. the poker example). Or if you have a register that has sets of odd-length bit patterns.
>

Exactly - or the bit pattern doesn't even mean a number, but the state of switches or buttons or something like that.

On Tuesday, 13 September 2022 at 20:12:10 UTC, Don Allen wrote:
> So you used 0b notation to come up with a justification for 0b notation :-)
>
> I do this sort of thing with an HP calculator.
>

No, he used binary notation because it's the best tool for the job. He didn't even need to reach for his calculator and that's the point.

I would also never do the bit shifting thing you showed earlier (for that purpose). It's way too much mental friction. You need to build in your mind what you'd see on screen with binary literals.

On Wednesday, 14 September 2022 at 00:35:04 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:
> On 9/13/2022 2:04 PM, Steven Schveighoffer wrote:
>>> Is it? How do you know it didn't overflow the int and create a long? How do you know you filled up the int?
>> 
>> How do you know the purpose is to fill up an int?
>
> Ok, I'll rephrase that. How do you know when to stop?
>
> There's a reason hex is so ubiquitous. It's compact. Binary literals beyond a few digits (8 max) are more or less unreadable. Yes, the _ can extend it to more digits before it becomes unreadable. (Even long hex numbers benefit from _, again, after 8 digits.)

As a digital electronics lover I wouldn't support Walter. But in the days when big data penetrated our bones, Walter was right. As the number of bits increases, grouping and counting becomes meaningless. The simplest example is the RGB color system. 16.7 million colors of 3 x 8 bits!

SDB@

On Wednesday, 14 September 2022 at 05:58:53 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:
> People often complain that D has too many features. What features would you say are not worth it?

ImportC, -betterC, @nogc, nothrow, @live. These things don't even *work* on their own terms, and they continue to have additional downstream effects over several parts of D and the ecosystem. Massive complication for little benefit.

To a lesser extent, @safe and dip1000 can go too.

On Wednesday, 14 September 2022 at 12:36:09 UTC, Ali Çehreli wrote:
> On 9/14/22 01:43, Patrick Schluter wrote:
>
> > `core.bitop.popcnt(check) == 4` would be simpler and most
> modern CPU's
> > have an instruction for that.
>
> That will give total number of bits set. Steve's function determines whether 5 neighboring bits are set consecutively, anywhere in the "register".

ok. My bad.

>
> And that 4 is a red herring that made me think I found a bug. No, the function finds 5 consecutive bits set by 4 shifts. :)
>

On Wednesday, 14 September 2022 at 05:58:53 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:
> On 9/13/2022 7:56 PM, Steven Schveighoffer wrote:
>> But it doesn't disprove the fact that *sometimes*, hex digits aren't as clear.
>
> Does sometimes justify a language feature, when there are other ways?
>
> People often complain that D has too many features. What features would you say are not worth it?

Template constraints. Horrible error messages (though better than they were) and confusing to work out which overload matches. They make documentation complicated. Just use static if and static assert instead to solve all these problems.

On Wednesday, 14 September 2022 at 05:58:53 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:
> On 9/13/2022 7:56 PM, Steven Schveighoffer wrote:
>> But it doesn't disprove the fact that *sometimes*, hex digits aren't as clear.
>
> Does sometimes justify a language feature, when there are other ways?

"Sometimes" justifies a lot of features. Hex literals are only sometimes useful for example.

On Wednesday, 14 September 2022 at 13:30:46 UTC, Adam D Ruppe wrote:
> On Wednesday, 14 September 2022 at 05:58:53 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:
>> People often complain that D has too many features. What features would you say are not worth it?
>
> ImportC, -betterC, @nogc, nothrow, @live. These things don't even *work* on their own terms, and they continue to have additional downstream effects over several parts of D and the ecosystem. Massive complication for little benefit.
>
> To a lesser extent, @safe and dip1000 can go too.

Because D is multiparadigm, everyone has their own list. I love and use all of those features. Currently I can only think of 1 feature I don't use, but others use it so it doesn't matter.