On Tuesday, 27 January 2015 at 02:30:12 UTC, Zach the Mystic
wrote:
On Tuesday, 27 January 2015 at 01:31:07 UTC, Jonathan Marler
wrote:
Yes you're right it adds more inconsistency (sorry what I said
was wrong). However, no matter what solution you choose you
have to choose one of two evils. Either add inconsistency or
break code. There's no way around it. If you ADD another way
to write the attributes that looks better, you've created more
"inconsistency". If you REPLACE the existing way to write
attributes, you've now broken code.
The third way is to do nothing, and live with the existing
inconsistency. It's not a bad choice, considering.
So again, I was suggesting one way of implementing my proposal
which was to add an inconsistency, but you could implement it
another way but you would have to break code. Do you have a
solution that doesn't do either? I think if you try to find
one, you'll see that I'm right in saying you're going to have
to choose one or the other.
I already suggested the best solution I could come up with:
break code in the most benign possible manner, using a
compiler-integrated 'dfix' experience. BTW, I'm glad you agree
with me about the ugliness of the @ sign. Even with dfix, the
decision could still be made to have everything use @'s, which
would be a solution to the consistency problem, but I would
only welcome it grudgingly. Good looking code is important to
me, and @ is *not* where that's @, so to say. :-)
Yes doing nothing is the other option :) I'm kinda bummed we are
in this situation in the first place. If we had a consistent
design in the first place it would have saved all this trouble.
Now we can:
1. Live with it
2. Break code
3. Create inconsistency
I believe my proposal is how it should have been designed in the
first place (allow identifiers to be function attributes), but
not the only way to fix it is to choose 2 or 3. I don't like
either option but I feel like the community is more accepting of
option 3 with a deprecation of the old methods.
The problem with doing nothing is these discussions are likely
never going to end. Someone will always bring up this issue and
people are going to waste time forever debating what should be
done. Although I think it was you who suggested that we could
simply document why it is the way it is, and that would help.
Anyway, thanks for considering my proposal, I know you had to
read a lot and you don't think it's a good idea but that's what
these forums are for.
