Andrei Alexandrescu:
This is usualy much better to have the compiler smash your
mistake right
into your face than discovering with a unittest much latter.
I don't think so.
Why?
My argument is that adding an additional layer of typing on top
of templates caters to people who want to ship code that has
literally zero testing. That's not a priority as far as I'm
concerned.
If those people want yo write zero unit tests, they will write
zero unit tests in both cases. I have seen D code like that.
Introducing some compiler tests isn't going to make that
situation worse and it's able to give better&nicer error messages
when you have just written a template and you have not yet
written a unittest (assuming you aren't using
Test-Driven-Development).
A template unittest often doesn't cover all possible
instantiations of a template. So some compiler tests that work on
all possible instantiations can help.
You can also look at the situation from the other way: assuming
you are correct, what currently present compiler tests do you
want to remove?
Bye,
bearophile
