DIP 1028--Make @safe the Default--Formal Assessment

[Steven Schveighoffer]

On 5/21/20 4:59 PM, Walter Bright wrote:
> On 5/21/2020 10:26 AM, Steven Schveighoffer wrote:
>> Agree. I will not be participating in the DIP process from now on. It 
>> is a complete waste of time. Walter should just make the changes he 
>> wants and not bother with the facade of discussion.
> 
> Many replies to you, Steven:
> 
> https://digitalmars.com/d/archives/digitalmars/D/Discussion_Thread_DIP_1028--Make_safe_the_Default--Final_Review_336354.html 

Many unsatisfactory replies. Eventually my attempts to explain my 
position were ignored. It's the equivalent of walking off stage because 
you lost the debate, only to claim you won because you stopped talking.

My points were straightforward, easy to understand, vastly agreed upon 
(and echoed) by all of the experienced people here (except you), and 
your rebuttals were extremely dubious, depending on hypothetical 
non-sequiturs with an imagined developer who doesn't understand how 
prototypes might work. Short story is, you made poor arguments and 
considered the matter closed "without comment". This is extremely 
unsatisfactory.

> I did not ignore you. I just didn't agree.

You didn't agree, and that is your choice. But you also didn't address 
any of the points I made, instead choosing to focus on confusion from an 
imaginary person who has no clue why his safe code cannot call unsafe 
functions even though the attributes are not explicit (which means he 
should probably spend the 10 seconds to learn and become a better 
programmer).

The unfortunate end result of this change is that safety will be gutted 
with all C functions being trusted by default, ironically by the person 
who is claiming that memory safety is of utmost importance, and how C 
got it wrong. All without delivering a single convincing argument as to 
why he is right.

I even put forth a completely ignored compromise solution that would 
have solved the problem and allowed extern(C) functions to be considered 
@safe by default: 
https://digitalmars.com/d/archives/digitalmars/D/Discussion_Thread_DIP_1028--Make_safe_the_Default--Final_Review_336354.html#N336968

This is why I consider the process a waste of time, and why I'm done 
participating.

-Steve