On 2013-02-26 08:56, foobar wrote:
DDoc isn't part of the language but rather part of the compiler, nevertheless it has its downsides. Being part of the compiler means that the compiler needs to be changed to address those and it isn't even written in D! The end result is all sort of additional auxiliary D utilities to post-process this in order to address some of those issues. Hence, A prime example of the failure that I'm talking about.
Having to use the JSON output to generate documentation just shows that DDoc is lacking.
unittest is worse, it is indeed part of the language so now the _language grammar_ needs to be changed to fix the problems with it, such as not having test names. A far better solution practiced in all other major languages is to use annotations and in fact, there probably already are similar D frameworks, thus exhibiting the same problem of multiple conflicting implementations you wished to avoid.
There are already several testing frameworks for D. The only thing I think the "unittest" keyword is useful for, is creating a block where to put the code. The rest will my framework handle.
Additional such problems - the AA issue which has been going own for years now. The endless discussions regarding tuples. It seems that D strives to bloat the language with needless features that really should have been standardized in the library and on the other hand tries to put in the library things that really ought to be built into the language to benefit from proper integration and syntax. The latest case was the huge properties debate and its offshoots regarding ref semantics which I didn't even bother participate in. Bartosz developed an ownership system for D to address all the safety issues raised by ref *years ago* and it was rejected due to complexity. Now, Andrei tries to achieve similar safety guaranties by giving ref the semantics of borrowed pointers. It all seems to me like trying to build an airplane without wings cause they are too complex. Rust on the other hand already integrated an ownership system and is already far ahead of D's design. D had talked about macros *years ago* and rust already implemented them.
I agree in general. -- /Jacob Carlborg
