the point of selective importing

[Lars Ivar Igesund]

Lars Ivar Igesund wrote:

> You couldn't be more right. I have been looking into the possibilities for
> a startup using D as a core technology. This is based on seeing the
> potential of D, using D and talking to other people using D. However, I am
> becoming doubtful that this is something I will even try to go through
> with. If it is something D need, then it is that the continued shaping of
> the language use the actual experience starting to be contained in the D
> community.
> 
> Walter, you seem unable to listen to (or understand) the issues met when
> developing libraries in D (which is a different thing from porting an
> application from C++), we are talking 2-3 years of solid experience
> writing libraries in D, Ant, Kris and others, they _know_ what the
> problems are, which I belive is much more important knowledge in this
> respect, than what was done in C++ many years ago. C++ experience don't
> help much when developing with D, D experience do. You don't want language
> committees, then for the sake of those actually using D, LISTEN TO THEM! I
> am not willing to flog a dead horse.
> 

I believe I might have been a bit rash here, but I got somewhat pissed
pouring over all the posts for the last few days. I will therefore restate
some of my thoughts in a calmer manner:

If we for a second ignore the language issues chatted about recently, most
people agree that D is missing libraries to be able to really compete with
other languages. It is therefore unfathomable to me why you Walter don't
actively try to make it easy to create good libraries in D. Libraries that
can be made stable, failsafe and predictable. You have said many enough
times that D is different enough to need different solutions to problems
already solved in other languages. Why is it then that you seemingly refuse
to listen to those that have tried to solve these problems in D over the
years? Those that have found that the language features in D probably need
to be refined to not only make libraries in D possible, but fun to write,
fun to use, safe to use and with a predictable usage pattern.

Writing a compiler is an impressive feat in my eyes, but AFAICS not the way
to get experience writing libraries in D. Here you'll need to listen to
those that have. Frankly, all the problems posted on symbol conflicts in
phobos itself should have told you that something is amiss and should be
fixed.

Since I'm getting the impression that the issue might be fixed soon, it is
then getting down to how. Reusing words like static and alias (that have
nothing to do in this company) is the wrong way, especially when there are
tried and tested solutions in languages like Python with a clear and
perfectly understandable syntax not confused by unrelated words. Why should
something that can be said unamibigiously in one statement have to be
divided into several unclear (static this, alias that)?

I wholeheartedly stand behind Kris' RFC elsewhere in the NG.

-- 
Lars Ivar Igesund
blog at http://larsivi.net
DSource & #D: larsivi