dmd 1.061 and 2.046 release

[Charles Hixson]

On 05/15/2010 02:00 AM, Walter Bright wrote:
> Don wrote:
>> Walter Bright wrote:
>>> Leandro Lucarella wrote:
>>>> I saw the patches, and having all hardcoded in the compiler doesn't
>>>> seems
>>>> like a good idea =/
>>>
>>> I know the hardcoding is probably not the best, but I wanted to try
>>> it out to see if it was a good feature before committing a lot of
>>> work to it.
>>>
>>> The alternative is to use some sort of configuration file for it. The
>>> problem, though, is that the hints are for newbies, and newbies
>>> probably aren't going to get a configuration file properly set up,
>>> especially if there are multiple such files.
>>
>> I think the only purpose of such a feature is to increase the chance
>> that a newbie's "hello world" compiles successfully. The importance of
>> that can't be underestimated, I think. First impressions matter.
>
> Yes, or at least have a to-the-point error message rather than just an
> undefined identifier.
>
> It's amazing how much information we take for granted. For example, I've
> been trying to use Apple's xcode system. I find it hard to do the most
> trivial things, like trying to figure out how to just start the thing.
>
> Apple's web site isn't much better, it's got to be the most hard to read
> site I've ever encountered. The text is a faint grey on white, of all
> things, and the font is so poorly rendered my eyes turn red and painful
> after a while reading it. I have to actually select the text in order to
> read it. I find this astonishing, am I doing something wrong?
>
> It won't render at all in Explorer.
>
> The D web site is rather pedestrian, but at least it's easy on the eyes.

*Pedestrian*??

The D web pages are a marvel of clarity and utility.  Compare them to 
the Python web pages, which I rate a second best.  Things are documented 
with relative clarity, one can generally find what one needs with a bit 
of searching, even if one doesn't know what it's named.  Etc.

The D web site has only two minor (*minor*!) problems
One is the search engine which doesn't work on local copies.
The other is that one needs to disable google translation on local 
copies, or everything loads too slowly.
(The first of those is probably impossible to deal with, but the second 
looks trivial.)

If by pedestrian you mean clean, clear, and easy to use, then give me 
more pedestrian.

My sole problem with D is one that's probably impossible to address: 
the lack of libraries.  When I need libraries, I usually end up using 
some other language.  But it sure isn't the web page.

(DSource is marvelous, but most of the libraries listed appear to be 
either moribund or morbid.)