Is D really community driven?

[Bruno Medeiros]

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

D, the language itself at least, is Inner Circle driven. (I say this 
facetiously but seriously)
Meaning that in the great majority of situations Walter only considers 
the opinion of those of the Inner Circle, even when there is large 
community consensus.
I think the cases where Walter has actually changed the language upon 
the opinions of the D community (aka the Outer Circle? :P ), was, in a 
rough sense, when there was no parallel to C++ whatsoever, and thus 
there was no influence or opinion from the Inner Circle or the C++ 
community.
Some examples that pop into mind: 'lazy', and the FQN, aliasing, 
selective imports.

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