On Thu, Feb 16, 2006 at 10:20:25AM +0000, Ross Paterson wrote:
Features do impact on people who never use them: when they make errors that stray near the syntactic and type-system space occupied by the feature, and when they read or modify code written by others. As JohnH said, every addition increases the cost of the language, and needs to bring significant benefit to justify inclusion.
Oh, I didn't mean to imply the features wouldn't impact people that didn't use them. Just that they might not necessarily not use the feature because it is bad, or they wouldn't be happier with it, but rather because they just havn't learned it. Not that I am saying anything about parallel list comprehensions necessarily, but just in general I would be wary of dropping a feature just on the basis of some people not using it who have never tried it. not against dropping it, just wary without some more investigation into finding out a bit more why people don't use said feature. After all, they could just know a much cooler feature that subsumes it that I havn't found yet :)
Oh golly. I can't live without pattern guards.
Yes, I knew my position was more extreme there.
perhaps mine is too :) but they are very nice. John -- John Meacham - ⑆repetae.net⑆john⑈