On 2012-03-20 16:17, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
On 3/20/12 12:50 AM, Kapps wrote:
Perhaps we should add a field of type Variant[string].
No, not Variant[string] again.
This is an already ridiculously hackish approach, and
it *does not* work for anything besides trivial applications. It is
completly unreasonable to expect everything to be done in a library; the
compiler exists for a reason and at some point you have to draw the
line.
I'm afraid I disagree. A targeted language feature definitely makes a
library approach inferior, by definition. But adding features is
cheating, like printing money is for a government: very tempting, with
apparently good short-term benefits, but with devastating cumulative
effects.
Also, as I mentioned, the availability of the easy escape hatch of
adding a language feature thwarts creativity. Nobody will care to think
about and come with idioms that use the language to do great things, if
they know a language feature could be always added that makes things
"nicer".
I'm not saying this particular feature should or should not be in the
language, but I wish our community exercised considerably more restraint
when it comes about adding new language features.
See my reply to one of your other posts:
http://forum.dlang.org/thread/bccwycoexxykfgxve...@forum.dlang.org?page=9#post-jk9gk8:242t7k:241:40digitalmars.com
--
/Jacob Carlborg
