On Sunday, 28 October 2012 at 20:59:25 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:
It baffles me that programmers would find "undefined symbol" hard to make sense of.
Do really think that your typical Java programmer is familiar with the term »symbol« in the compiler/linker sense? Also, don't underestimate the perceived scariness/ugliness of mangled names in linker error messages. I'm pretty much fluent in reading D mangled names by now, but most newcomers definitely aren't.
That, coupled with the absence of the typical source location information (IDE integration!), is probably enough to make encountering such errors a significantly more unpleasant experience for most people than compiler errors.
Again, maybe not for you, maybe not for me, but I think it is clear that this is a problem to some, so the discussion should not be about talking the problem away, but rather about evaluating possible solutions/mitigation strategies in terms of feasibility (e.g. name demangling in linker output?).
David
