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
More information about the Digitalmars-d-announce
mailing list