On Fri, 09 Dec 2011 00:27:39 -0500, so <s...@so.so> wrote:
On Fri, 09 Dec 2011 06:26:27 +0200, Robert Jacques <sandf...@jhu.edu>
wrote:
So it clashes with another thing about D, pragmatism.
I'm not sure what you mean by that.
It was/is one of the defining points of D AFAIK.
More than being theoretical it chose to be pragmatic, to solve the
problems we face day to day.
For the case at hand; Say uninitialized variables in C are undefined but
all the compilers do
the same thing that makes it in practice defined. So the below line should
execute same on all compilers.
type a;
Same applies to the extensions supported in all major compilers which is
absent in language spec.
If compilers don't support, they can't sell.
To the point. If you want to keep B-D rule with the presence of such big
design mistakes (C), you are not being pragmatic at all.
Interesting point. I agree with D being a very pragmatic language (it's one of
my favorite things about it), but I come to a different conclusion. The ability
to copy and paste code, i.e. source compatible, is one of the most pragmatic
things a language can do. And, unlike C++, the B-D rule allows D to break
compatibility and therefore convert design mistakes into invalid syntax.
However, this is at the cost of preventing the invalidated syntax from being
re-used for other means.
