Do we need a time-out in D evolution?

Charlie charlie.fats at gmail.com
Tue Jun 5 16:57:35 PDT 2007



BCS wrote:
> Reply to Clay,
> 
>> 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.
>>>
>>> But now, when I'm writting some D code, I know that in near feature
>>> the  next D version will be here. And that version broke my code
>>> because of  consts and new syntax of resizeable arrays. So why to
>>> start a new big  project on D if its codebase will be obsolete in few
>>> months?
>>>
>>> And I'm affraid that after adding consts/final/invariant support to D
>>> the  language keeps their envolution :(
>>>
>>> Yes consts/final/invariant is a great addition to the language. But D
>>> now  is very powerful language. It is now more powerful than C++0x
>>> will be. So  may be it is better to stop add new features and make a
>>> stable platform  for library/tools writters at first and then for
>>> applications writters?  AFAIK, every successful languages were going
>>> such way -- the good initial  release and some new releases later
>>> with years of stability beetwen them.  And I'm affraid that C++0x
>>> will be here before D would get a stable  language with enough
>>> libraries and tools.
>>>
>>> May be it is better to concentrate on improvement of the current
>>> implementation (fast precise GC instead of the current conservative
>>> GC,  for example) instead of introducing incompatible changes in the
>>> language?
>>>
>>> And my main question is: will be D a constanly changing language or
>>> will  be there some time-outs in its evolution?
>>>
>>> -- 
>>> Regards,
>>> Yauheni Akhotnikau
>> D 1.0 is locked, the features you are talking about are D 2.0
>> features.
>>
> 
 > we're all so used to using beta around here that that has almost no 
meaning

Agreed, and AFAIK , bug fixes aren't being applied to 1.0 , and they 
we're some apparently large bugs

 >>> And my main question is: will be D a constanly changing language or
 >>> will  be there some time-outs in its evolution?

I've also been tracking since 2003, its now 1/2 way though 2007,  and I 
don't think D is anywhere near slowing down, if anything it seems to be 
gaining momentum.  But I have resigned to using it in commercial stuff, 
when D has finally ( I'm genuinely guessing 3 - 4 years ) slowed to a 
stop, its going to be an amazing language.  And I don't really want it 
to stop improving, I did at one point, but I think some of the new stuff 
is really going to drive some innovation in the programming world.





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