Vision document for H1 2018

[Dylan Graham]

On Sunday, 11 March 2018 at 04:06:13 UTC, Nick Sabalausky 
(Abscissa) wrote:
> On 03/10/2018 05:47 AM, Dylan Graham wrote:
>> On Saturday, 10 March 2018 at 10:05:49 UTC, rumbu wrote:
>>>
>>> According to the State of D Survey, 71% of the respondents 
>>> don't care about betterC. Why is betterC on the priority list?
>> 
>> Yeah. Why should D worry about tying itself into C when it 
>> can't even interface with itself through DLLs?
>
> First of all, betterC is about far more than interfacing with 
> C. In fact, interop with C isn't really what betterC is about 
> at all - that's a separate aspect of the language. (And those 
> C/C++ users who still haven't come to D - for many of them the 
> holdout is *because* of the issues betterC aims to address. 
> Make no mistake, for all the stockholm syndrome in the C and 
> C++ worlds, there *are* a lot people openly wanting to jump 
> ship but don't have a sufficient option yet. Heck, *I'm* a 
> C/C++ -> D convert.)
>
> But more importantly:
>
> The D language itself is specifically designed and intended to 
> be multi-purpose. Because of that, D users (and potential D 
> users) are *highly* diverse. Everybody here has their own 
> use-cases, their own needs and priorities, and their own list 
> of things they want fixed yesterday.
>
> In a group this diverse, there just simply *isn't* much on the 
> D wishlist that's crucially important to a *majority*, because 
> we all need completely different things.
>
> Personally, better DLL support have little to no impact on me. 
> Obviously it does for you, and I sympathise. Some of the things 
> most important to me for D to improve you probably wouldn't 
> care one bit about - and that's ok. We work on different sorts 
> of things.
>
> Improved betterC is something I would find very nice if I ever 
> have time or opportunity to get back into embedded software. 
> But outside of that, yea, it doesn't impact me much more than 
> it does for you.
>
> But here's the rub: In this crowd here, probably far more than 
> most languages, we all have such wildly varying needs that 29% 
> *is* what qualifies as significant around here. Most wishlist 
> items are going to have similarly non-majority numbers. And 
> they have to pick *something* to focus on. Luckily, as the 
> vision document clearly states, there are *several* such 
> "somethings" the dlang foundation is committing to working on.

You do have a good point. One of my likes for D was its 
flexibility, so it was very hypocritical of me to argue for what 
I did.

I regret some of things I said. I'm sorry for any offence caused, 
specifically towards members of the DLF.

I wish that DLL support was referenced in the vision document. I 
actually like most of what's been said in it, especially the 
@safe, @nogc and editor support. I also see Benjamin Thaut (if 
you're reading this - awesome work!) making progress on DLL 
support, I just wish the foundation could help him out a bit.