Vision for the first semester of 2016

[jmh530 via Digitalmars-d-announce]

On Thursday, 28 January 2016 at 11:25:08 UTC, Laeeth Isharc wrote:
>
> I do like the building-block idea you suggest, but one must 
> think about the deeper reasons for why things are owned by 
> which people.  (I have found the Coase theorem and work on 
> industrial organisation to be quite stimulating in thinking 
> about this question).
>
> In theory it's completely irrelevant as to whether is something 
> is in the standard library or can just be imported via dub or a 
> git clone, but in practice that's not the case.
>

Sigh...

The Coase Theorem is about externalities. The whole point of the 
Coase theorem is that when one person is causing a nuisance or 
polluting it is costly to bargain so the efficient allocation may 
not result. The law/courts should assign property rights in such 
a way to maximize efficiency. This does not seem relevant.

Based on the second paragraph, I think you meant Ronald Coase's 
work in the paper The Nature of the Firm. This paper asks the 
question why things are made in a firm or contracted to other 
firms. This clearly parallels your discussion of why things are 
included in phobos or not.

However, the whole point of the Nature of the Firm is that 
transaction costs exist in the real world. Firms trade-off the 
transaction costs of contracting business outside the firm with 
the benefits of doing things in house. These pressures lead to 
constraints on the maximum size of a firm.

Coming back to phobos and the fact that there are transaction 
costs in the real world (discussions on the forum about the 
future of D are clearly transaction costs), this implies that "in 
theory" it is not irrelevant as to whether something is in the 
standard library or not. As discussed elsewhere, there are 
clearly benefits to putting some things in phobos (if only for 
providing a framework for others), and there are costs as it gets 
too large.