Walter's annoying habits (good habits)

[Stewart Gordon]

Waldemar wrote:
>> Nonetheless, there are people here that have made copious 
>> contributions to D.  Yes, Walter does own large entitlement to the 
>> work that has gone into the reference compiler and libraries, but 
>> that's mostly because he controls it and there's very little that 
>> people can do to make large contributions internally: they very 
>> likely would if they could.  Most contributions, therefore, are 
>> relegated to periphery tasks or identifying bugs (fixing them is 
>> not often accepted).  This has been the way Walter has preferred to 
>> run things, and for the most part people have accepted this.  
>> Although every once in awhile flair-ups occur because members get 
>> frustrated when contributions are refused, rejected, forgotten, or 
>> ignored despite the same bugs being brought up repeatedly.  The 
>> reason for this is more often because Walter is already overloaded 
>> with work, and he cannot manage to review and implement all 
>> contribution.

This may be true.  However, the odd reminders of such things as fixes 
waiting to be folded in should at least work, when folding them in is 
sufficiently quick and straightforward that "just do it now and get it 
out of the way" is an efficient strategy.

<snip>
> From a user point of view (i.e. somebody that does not contribute to 
> D development but is contemplating using the language), Walter's so 
> called "annoying habits" produced a pretty good product.  Therefore, 
> I would call them good habits.  We (ooops, here's the "we" but it is 
> intended to mean "non specific future users of D")  are getting a 
> language that addresses many problems and shortcomings encountered in 
> existing tools, most prominently C/C++.  D is attractive in certain  
> applications.

An interesting concept.  Walter may easily have produced a pretty good 
product _despite_ these habits, and while some of them may have helped 
Walter to concentrate on improving the quality of the product, I still 
believe it would be better still if Walter did more to appreciate and 
make use of the work of this community.

> Alas, the innerworkings of the team that produces D are of major 
> interest to the users. Basically, what's need is a product that may 
> be called mainstream.  D has advanced to the point where it is quite 
> usable and the language design and implementation issues are no 
> longer the top concern.  The top concern is how mainstream it is.  Of 
> course, D is not mainstream yet.  That's OK.  The question is what is 
> the roadmap to becoming one.  In other words, how do the developers 
> intend to bring the language to the level where it is accepted on par 
> with C++/Python/PHP, etc, etc.

Yes, I agree that getting D into the mainstream in this sense would be a 
good idea.  When hopes of releasing 1.0 were a long way off, spreading 
the word around about it seemed a good idea.  I suppose it's partly my 
thinking that while the language was still expected to remain in a beta 
stage for the foreseeable future, its faults would have been forgivable 
by many.  I for one was optimistic back then that most of the faults 
would be dealt with before 1.0, and I suspect many people who come and 
find D would expect the same.

> Continuing on Walter's good habits, I can see the improvement every 
> year, and the upcoming 1.0 is great news.  So far so good.  There is 
> progress elsewhere as well. Good, good.

This little bit of optimism has got me thinking.  All too many times in 
my life, my glass has gone from half full to half empty.  But here, I 
think the problem is that the glass is getting bigger as more is being 
poured into it.

But I continue to have high hopes for D, and that the glass really is 
filling up now.

Stewart.