alt Hacker News> partial evaluation (comptime) as a single coherent mechanism that replaces a myriad of other partial-evaluation mechanisms (macros, templates/generics, constexprs).
So sad dlang never gets the credit it deserves. None of these ideas in zig are novel.
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abainbridge • today at 7:52 AM
Yes. I don't really understand why Zig gets more attention than dlang. It seems that it is more to do with the personality of the authors, rather than the technicalities. I get the impression that Walter is more laissez-faire, while Andrew is more single-minded. I'm grateful to the contributions both have made.
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It is entirely novel. As I wrote, what makes the design revolutionary isn't the partial evaluation mechanism itself, but how the language is organised around it. It's like what made the iPhone's design revolutionary wasn't that it had a touchscreen, but that it didn't have a keypad. Partial evaluation mechanisms aren't very interesting in themselves; what's interesting is building a language around a unified partial evaluation mechanism and little else. But yes, D gets credit for adding more partial evaluation features.