Two standard libraries?

[Steve Teale]

It bothers me that Phobos and Tango seem to be completely divergent.  One of the things that makes a language successful is that it has a good standard library.  It seems that with D, you have to be a betting man - which standard library will prevail.

It seemes to me that given Walter's definition of the language - a system programming language - that Phobos is closer to the mark.  If users want a more object oriented standard library, that's all well and good, but it should be a shoe-in, then if you want to use the OO stuff you can, but code that's been written to work with Phobos should work unmodified with other libraries.  (Note the recent discussion on C++ security). Any other approach seems to me to reek of vanity.

I am not saying that Phobos is perfect.  It has lots of omissions, but I have a feeling that it is about at the right level to enable authors to write the more OO stuff on top of it.

I'm sure that this is a sensitive subject, but there you go!  I think we all agree that Walter has done a damn good job on D, so why should we reject his thinking on Phobos?  I've been watching Walter for a long time now, and in my book, he knows as much about his subject as anyone does, especially considering the coverage that's expected of him.

If D is to succeed, I think we should work together rather than compete.  I'd like to see a much more formal system for contributors to take responsibility for areas of Phobos.  Maybe it exists, but if it does, it's hardly in your face.  I'd also like to see people back off on trying to replace it.  Let's improve it and augment it.