Do we need a time-out in D evolution?

[Bill Baxter]

eao197 wrote:
> I'm watching for discussions 'Stepping back and looking at constness 
> from another angle' here and 'resizeable arrays: T[new]' & 'preparing 
> for const, final, and invariant' in digitalmars.D.announce and I'm sad. 
> I occasionally locked to D may be from 2003 -- it was a constantly 
> changing language. At the end of 2006 I thought that D is stable enough 
> to start to use it. And in Jan 2007 the v.1.000 went out. I thought that 
> in near time D would have only bug fix releases and it is a time when 
> various tools for D (like libraries and IDEs) would be produced.
> 
> But I was wrong.
> 
> What we have now? The language which keeps their evolution. Lack of 
> libraries, lack of tools, lack of documentation (books and tutorials). 
> As a consequence -- lack of users. And we don't get much new users and 
> new applications without new libraries/tools/documentation.
> 
> As a programmer I need a stable language. A language in which I can 
> write a domain-specific library and forget about its maintenace for 
> three of five years (as for some of my C++ libraries those I wrote in 
> 2002-2003). I need to write applications and because of that I need a 
> quality and stable compiler, a quality and stable standard library, and 
> quality third party libraries. And third party libraries' writters need 
> a stable tools too.

Of all the features under consideration for D, const is the one most 
likely to have sweeping repercussions throughout the language.  So if D 
is ever to get a serious const, it better happen sooner rather than 
later, precisely so it can settle down and become stable.  The longer 
Walter waits, the more libraries and code that will be affected and need 
to change.  There are *no* other proposals on the table that I know 	of 
that will be require such major changes to the language.  None.  Const 
is the big daddy.  Reflection things may be big in terms of 
implementation work, but impact on backwards compatability should be 
pretty much nil.

So far Walter has spent, what, about a month focused on const?  If it 
works out then great.  The issue will be settled, and no longer be a 
cloud looming on the horizon.  If it doesn't, well then too the issue 
will be settled, and no longer be a cloud looming on the horizon. 
Either way, the big daddy change will be behind us.

--bb