bool (was DConf 2019 AGM Livestream)

[Nicholas Wilson]

On Sunday, 12 May 2019 at 10:58:49 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
> Rejected D Improvement Proposals on small matters that D 
> language's leader thinks strongly about should allow everybody 
> to move on to larger, better things.
>
> We are unable to, and should not be required to, provide 
> argumentation when making a decision on a DIP that will be to 
> the satisfaction of everybody involved.

No no no, no. No.

You have rejected the DIP to the annoyance of the community, That 
is fine. You have a decision making process.

However in this case the community consensus is that the chain of 
reasoning you have used to arrive at your decision is wrong.

> Of course, pressure does exist on making the right decision and 
> on framing it properly;

Indeed, you should be making the right decisions _ for the right 
reasons_. I note that this is uncorrelated with wether or not we 
want the feature, c.f. refcounting before we had copy 
constructors (wanted it but couldn't have it because memory 
safety reasons) and opPostMove (didn't want to have to have it 
but e.g. couldn't interface with GCC's std::string).

> otherwise, one poor decision after another, we end up with a 
> bad language that people will not want to use.

Yes, but for the completely opposite reason. If the community 
believe the reasoning you provide for the decision you have made 
is wrong then we will end up with a language we not as satisfied 
with.

> [Because reasons] that all is wasted time.
>
> There's a bunch of big rocks to move.

Jut because we have a bunch of other large problems does not mean 
that we shouldn't be fixing other problems in the language that 
you happen to disagree with.