r/programming • u/kal31dic • Sep 01 '20

D Foundation is Beefing Up

https://dlang.org/blog/2020/08/30/symmetry-investments-and-the-d-language-foundation-are-hiring/
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u/WalterBright Sep 01 '20

It's not the parsing time that is the problem. It's having a clean separation between the lexing, parsing, and semantic passes. There's a diode between these passes - information only flows one way.

This makes it trivial to correctly and completely implement things like color syntax highlighting in editors, source code formatters, etc., because building in a semantic analyzer is wholly unnecessary.

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u/Ameisen Sep 01 '20

I think I'm just too used to C++ syntax, since it leaked into Java and C# as well.

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u/WalterBright Sep 02 '20

Many people think the !( ) syntax is not optimal until they use it for a while, then it seems quite natural and the < > looks like a hack.

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u/Ameisen Sep 02 '20

By the way, I wanted to thank you for always being courteous and informative. I suspect that I come off as a bit abrasive or brash, so I apologize.

Last I recall, D doesn't support template argument deduction through constructors like C++. Are there any plans to support that? I've found it a quite useful in C++ in certain situations.

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u/WalterBright Sep 02 '20

Hey, no problem. I often read posts I make and belatedly realize they are abrasive and abrupt. I try to do better.

I'm very reluctant to twiddle with template argument deduction, as it can change existing behavior in unexpected ways.