On Monday, 27 February 2023 at 10:47:04 UTC, Mike Parker wrote:
Razvan [submitted a PR deprecating `alias this` in classes](https://github.com/dlang/dmd/pull/14812) the next day. Amaury [initiated a forum discussion](https://forum.dlang.org/thread/roaaoujwgkzednetb...@forum.dlang.org) a few days later.
Is there a replacement? If not, why is this even being discussed? I'm all for breaking changes if there's a benefit and an easy path to maintain the existing functionality. This fails on both counts. If you want to enforce that it's not used, add a flag, but don't take it away just for the sake of taking it away.
Martin suggested a fourth option: phase out `-betterC` because it's a "pile of hacks". Dennis considered that but thought BetterC users would not be happy when it gets deprecated without a suitable replacement.
If you don't like BetterC, don't use BetterC. It *already* requires a flag.
More generally, deprecation decisions like this shouldn't be made by a small group of people that write a tiny percentage of the D code running in the real world. That same process gave us a safe by default proposal that would have made it impossible to interoperate with C code.
