On Wednesday, 13 November 2019 at 14:01:13 UTC, BoQsc wrote:
I don't like to see exclamation marks in my code in as weird
syntax as these ones:
to!ushort(args[1])
s.formattedRead!"%s!%s:%s"(a, b, c);
No pressure to use templates. D is designed to be multi-paradigm,
and in many was combines the advantages of c++ and c# even if you
use just traditional imperative or object oriented ways. For
example, C# has array bounds checking, C++ has raw type casting,
but D has both. And neither of the mentioned languages have
`scope (exit`. Granted, some other new language, like Go, might
be even better if you don't care about templates.
That being said, I think you definitely should learn about
templates. First, it let's you understand code written by others,
and secondly you can evaluate whether you really want to code
without them. There are problems you simply cannot deal with as
efficiently as you can with templates. For example, if you write
a math function you want to work with both integers and floats,
you basically have four options:
1: Code duplication.
2: Runtime casting of the argument to the type the function is
implemented in, wasting computational power. Traditional
object-oriented solution falls in this category.
3: Using a macro preprocessor. Macros are unaware of code
semantics and thus are known for making codebases buggy and hard
to maintain.
4: Templates. Same code size bloat as with options 1 and 3, but
otherwise basically no downsides.
