standardization of D

[Ameer Armaly]

Hi all. There are a few things which have been bothering me as of late, and 
I want your opinions on them to know whether or not I'm jumping at shadows. 
For starters, we all have a common goal of making D as widely used as 
possible since we all love the language, otherwise we probably wouldn't be 
here. At the same time, there are a few factors which as I see it make the 
adoption of D much more difficult and need to be addressed if we intend to 
succeed:
1. 1.0 doesn't appear to be any special sort of marker with regard to the 
standard; we have not only CTFE but mixins added post-1.0, along with 
numerous changes to the _standard_library. I understand the compiler can be 
made to strictly conform to the 1.0 spec, but the fact still remains it 
seems very ad hoc. What ought to happen IMO is that we first call a review 
of the language spec where everyone sends in any complaints they have and 
they must be clearly addressed to everyone's satisfaction, or at least to 
the degree that's possible. Then, the spec ought to be frozen for a while, 
and we work strictly on the standard library, which I'll address later. 
Then, the whole D language, including standard library, ought to be frozen 
for several years to let it proliferate throughout the technical community; 
an experimental compiler can of course undergo development, but clearly 
marked as such and _separate_ from the stable compiler.
2. We have two competing standard libraries; this is nowhere near good. 
Phobos is basically built on C wherever possible and sort of thrown 
together, and Tango reminds me of Java with a class for everything and then 
some. For the standard's sake (and consequent adoption), D needs one 
accepted standard library. The current state makes that difficult because 
Walter is forced to hand-manage both the compiler and library. What ought to 
happen IMO is that Walter should delegate day to day library management to a 
trusted associate who will occasionally inform Walter of the latest 
developments; Walter makes the final call, and life goes on.
So to conclude, these are issues that have been sort of addressed at various 
times in other issues, but never to a point that accomplished the intended 
goal. The D community is growing; there are going to be a lot of new people 
that look at it now and say "Huh? Say again?" Maybe we ought to step back 
and forget the years we've had to become comfortable with D and analyze it 
from a potential user's point of view in order to make adoption easier.
Thoughts?