If there was a majority in favour of D3, with breaking changes, and a strong focus on meta-programming, then it would make a lot of sense to streamline the language.

What would that consist of? I would say:

1. Figuring out what the missing bits for meta-programming are.

2. Taking out all language constructs that can be implemented as a library feature.

3. Add some syntactical sugar where necessary (mapping to library features).

Which features that are currently in the language could with some adjustments be done as a library feature?

Hashtable?

Dynamic array?

Slices?

Shared?

Class?

Others language features…?

(I think all these could be done if meta-programming facilities were strengthened.)

What do you think?

On Sunday, 28 November 2021 at 20:47:28 UTC, Ola Fosheim Grøstad wrote:

I think these could've been implemented as structs, then the only change would be to rewrite any T[] to Array!T, given structs are able completely replicate their behavior.

This in turn can lessen the coupling between compiler and the implementation, and allow other potential implementations. For example using custom gc, or making them rc counted (given rc problems are solved), or having a backing store location implementation hidden by interface allowing you to use different storing methods. There might be some compatibility problems though.

I.e. you won't have any breakage here, though you might consider removing them as language constructs, and have the said breakage.

Best regards,
Alexandru.

On Sunday, 28 November 2021 at 21:01:53 UTC, Elronnd wrote:

A good compiler will detect standard library features and use a fast-path/optimized-path for those. So there should be no performance impact.

On Sunday, 28 November 2021 at 21:56:37 UTC, Alexandru Ermicioi wrote:

Yes, that should be the goal. Improve on meta-programming facilities and extending structs with more capabilities to make the language both smaller and more powerful.

And exactly right, "T[…]" could be syntactical sugar that maps onto a standard library type, making the language more uniform and adaptable.

I think one has to accept breakage in order to streamline the language, so it would require D3, but the resulting language should be equally expressive!

(I think that ought to be possible.)

On Sunday, 28 November 2021 at 20:47:28 UTC, Ola Fosheim Grøstad wrote:

Pretty much anything can be solved in a library, except for things that requires AST/macros.

On Sunday, 28 November 2021 at 20:47:28 UTC, Ola Fosheim Grøstad wrote:

And consequentely we can rename it "!" instead of "D".

On Monday, 29 November 2021 at 11:38:17 UTC, rumbu wrote:

I understand your concern, but the crux is to provide syntactical sugar. D already does this for user-defined operators, so it is a matter of coming up with something equally useful for other constructs than operators.

The advantage is that in meta-programming you can ignore all the syntactical sugar and deal only with the minimal core language.

(Syntactical sugar disappears after the AST has been built.)

On Monday, 29 November 2021 at 11:22:44 UTC, Ola Fosheim Grøstad wrote:

for D better,tolerence breakage is OK.

On Monday, 29 November 2021 at 11:12:16 UTC, Ola Fosheim Grøstad wrote:

static casts, devirtualization, are reasons for built-in classes.
Things for classes that can be done in the library are already done there, e.g dynamic casts.