On Sunday, 27 January 2013 at 13:24:31 UTC, TommiT wrote:
But, joking aside, I think that all hate against optional parentheses stems from the increase of ambiguity they indisputably cause. However, let's imagine a future where your perfect D IDE paints function calls red, and variables blue. Then, it will be obvious to you which identifiers are variables and which are function calls based on their color. In this situation it will feel silly to have to write those empty parentheses, because they don't make the code any less ambiguous (it's already perfectly unambiguous because of the colors) and, infact, those empty parentheses make the code (a bit) harder to read.
If we require clever IDE to distinguish visually something as basic as data semantics and callable semantics it is an indicator language design is screwed. Relying on IDE features is what made Java unusable for expressive, robust code. I may use an IDE help when I need to learn architecture level connections in new project, but at scope level semantics for reader should be perfectly clear and unambiguous even if opened in notepad.
2 cents from vim user and optional parens hater here.
