In this post, I present a simple rule of thumb that covers most cases of the common decision: should a feature go in the compiler, or in the standard library?
Note: this only applies to features that aren't in C. 1) If it's a word, put it in the standard library. 2) Otherwise, put it in the compiler. For example: assert() -> library. complex -> library. void -> C-derived, compiler. real -> C-derived via long float, compiler. cfloat -> library. for -> compiler. foreach -> library. T[] -> compiler. T.dup, T.sort, T.reverse -> library. I would consider this change more important than all the multithreading improvements made in D2 to date, _maybe_ more important than the const features. The justification for this change is that words can be trivially looked up in the documentation, thus they aren't deserving of a place in the minimal working set of language features. As it stands, the claim on the homepage that it's easier to implement a D compiler than a C++ one is highly dubious. This rule, consistently applied, would help bring back some of the simplicity that was lost during the D2.0 feature frenzy. Your thoughts?
