If D becomes a failure, what's the key reason, do you think?

[Bruno Medeiros]

Walter Bright wrote:
> Kyle Furlong wrote:
>> *Standing Ovation*
> 
> Yeah, that's concerned me as well. But it isn't just me trying to make 
> it perfect, everyone's got their favorite bug/feature that must get in 
> before 1.0.
> 
> So what do you say we just call D right now *1.0* and move on? It's not 
> like D will stop undergoing improvements.
> 

Here comes the contrarian view:
I think the people that want 1.0 ASAP (I'm not one of them btw) want 
more than just the branding "1.0", they want some guarantees that the 
language is good enough to be usable as is, and they likely also want 
"1.0" to mean that 2.0 won't be radically different from 1.0 . For 
example, let's consider this:

clayasaurus wrote:
 >
 > This will make two groups of people happy,
 >
 > #1) People who are waiting for D 1.0 for very large / commercial
 > products, as well as perhaps a D 1.0 book to start the publicity tour
 >

In this case of wanting to write a 1.0 book or doing very large 
commercial products, then "1.0" actually should indicate that the 
language is good and polished enough as is. They want a finished 
product, and likely also want that 2.0 won't be radically different from 
1.0, so that the book won't quickly become mostly obsolete, or that the 
large-scale product will need a lot of work to be updated to 2.0 .

Taking too long to reach a true 1.0 is a slightly bad in my opinion, but 
I think it is *much* worse to shove a "1.0" product that is flawed, 
unpolished, inconsistent, incomplete, etc.. And as is clear to all here, 
D still has many design issues that need to be worked out (not to 
mention Phobos).


-- 
Bruno Medeiros - CS/E student
http://www.prowiki.org/wiki4d/wiki.cgi?BrunoMedeiros#D