Is D really community driven?

Robert Fraser fraserofthenight at gmail.com
Mon Jul 23 16:28:30 PDT 2007


downs Wrote:

> The D homepage makes the claim that D "[...] is not governed by a corporate agenda or any 
> overarching theory of programming. The needs and contributions of the D programming community form 
> the direction it goes."
> Recent discussions on the newsgroup regarding assert with Object references that might be null (no, 
> segfault is _not_ a valid form of error checking ^^), CbD parameters or the older question of "!in" 
> come to mind as cases where the D community, as represented by this forum, pretty much voted as a 
> majority to introduce a certain behavior and Walter decided differently, out of reasons that many 
> posters would, and did, disagree with.
> 
> So, the question is: is D really ultimately community driven? I have no real problem with it being 
> a singular effort by Walter, but then he shouldn't claim that "the needs and contributions of the D 
> programming community" et cetera. Unless he's saying he knows the needs of the community better 
> than the community itself :)
>   --downs

Yes and no...  I think some of the __traits stuff was inspired by a post by Kirk McDonald (although I think Walter was planning some of this stuff for a while), extern(System) was a direct response after the outcry against the bugfix that removed version(Windows{extern(Windows):}, etc. There have been a number of times in the past things like that have come up.

On the other hand, if Walter doesn't like an idea (CbD...), he's probably not going to put it in the language.

I think we'll know a lot more come the conference.



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