2015 H1 Vision

Jerry Morrison via Digitalmars-d-announce digitalmars-d-announce at puremagic.com
Sun Feb 1 15:52:00 PST 2015


On Sunday, 1 February 2015 at 22:40:49 UTC, Dicebot wrote:
>>> - Create the D Language Foundation
>
> btw I personally think this is single most important point in 
> the list that is necessary to actually moved forward with 
> others in focused manner. But it really depends on how it is 
> defined.

Yes, a production language requires staffing the grunt work like 
release planning & management, soundness analysis, usability, 
documentation, bug fixing, testing, support, library development, 
tool development, and administration. (This must be a common 
issue for volunteer open-source projects.)

But first, people need to get on the same page about whether D is 
going to “cross the chasm” [1] to a production language with many 
more users than developers or remain what looks like a base for 
language experiments and hobby projects. I think a lot of 
grumpiness in the forums stems from this communication gap.


The other big thing missing from the Vision doc is picking a 
niche, *for example* a compelling destination for programmers & 
projects currently stuck in C++.
   * can call a wide range of C++ code [practical transition]
   * real-time, can run w/o GC pauses [projects that are OK with 
GC already moved off of C++]
   * familiar, multi-paradigm, fast builds, meta-programming, 
concurrency that doesn't kill you
   * simpler, predictable, few pitfalls, few special cases, few 
design quirks, orthogonal features
   * memory-safe, overflow-safe, reliable, secure, low maintenance 
costs

If you're up for that, it may require an incompatible transition 
(D3?) e.g. to make const non-transitive for C++ compatibility, to 
rethink memory management, and to change or remove incomplete 
features.

BTW a compiled language shines for fast startup (desktop apps) 
and predictable performance (real-time s/w). In contrast, JIT 
compilers and garbage collectors will continue improving program 
throughput (servers).

[1] 
http://smile.amazon.com/Crossing-Chasm-3rd-Geoffrey-Moore-ebook/dp/B00DB3D81G/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1422832418&sr=1-1&keywords=crossing+the+chasm


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