Beta 2.098.0

[H. S. Teoh]

On Tue, Oct 05, 2021 at 07:36:28PM +0200, ag0aep6g via Digitalmars-d-announce wrote:
[...]
> > > On Monday, 4 October 2021 at 22:40:19 UTC, Temtaime wrote:
> > > > What is really discourages me that persons like Walter instead
> > > > of making D great just do nothing helpful.
[...]
> It's absolutely true that many reported issues don't get fixed for
> *years*.  And that very much includes serious bugs. As far as I can
> tell, it's also true that Walter prioritizes new features instead
> (ImportC is the latest fad).
> 
> I sympathize with Temtaime. Their criticism wasn't sugar-coated, but
> it is constructive and it is valid in my opinion.

I don't agree with the tone of the criticism, but I do sympathize with
the sentiment.  The sad reality is that it's much more fun to write new
code than to debug old code.  Especially when you just had a cool idea
that feels like it would revolutionize everything.  And it very well
might do just that; but in the meantime, "boring" stuff like fixing bugs
in the current (probably hairy, messy, unclean) code gets neglected.

This is a particularly pronounced problem in groups consisting mostly of
experts or highly-experienced people.  Everybody wants to do the cool,
innovative stuff, nobody feels like doing the boring grunt work.  Worse
yet, in high-expertise areas like debugging the D compiler even those
who are willing to do the grunt work may not actually feel qualified
enough to do it.

But grunt work is just as necessary as the innovative, ground-breaking
stuff.  *Somebody* has to step up and be willing to do it.  It's a
thankless, unrewarding job, but a very necessary one.


T

-- 
Don't modify spaghetti code unless you can eat the consequences.