Do we need a time-out in D evolution?

[Danny]

eao197 Wrote:

> My question was inspiried by const/final/invariant discussion. But my  
> question is not about necessarity of adding const/final/invariant. So let  
> take me some explanation.
> 
> At first, I'm C++ programmer and I like 'const' in C++. Sometimes it  
> really helps to avoid bug (last case was a few days ago). Because of that  
> I want to see consts in D (but current situation with  
> const/final/invariant looks too complicated for me).
> 
> But the question isn't in const or AST macros or something else. The  
> question is in incompatible changes to language after the short time since  
> v.1.000. It is not good I think.
> 
> I think it always be something cool and desirable for including in  
> language. Even if we don't know now what it will be. For example: why  
> thought about const/final/invariant at Jan 2007 when v.1.000 was released?
> 
> Because of that must be some moment when Walter say: "We stop adding new  
> features. Now we take two or three years of language stability and see  
> what happens here". I thought v.1.014 is a good moment for that. But now  
> we are talking about consts...
> 
> So my question is: "Is there a planed time-out in D evolution?"
> 
> -- 
> Regards,
> Yauheni Akhotnikau

I don't think a planned time-out in a language evolution would be a good idea.  Yes, changes to the language may make older programs incompatible with the new versions, and that would be quite bad for the language in general.  But D needs to continue to evolve, if it is going to, until its basically done.  People can then begin building libraries for it, and grow its code base.  If we were to pause D's evolution and pick it up again later, it would cause all the existing code to no longer work, leaving people to either give up the old working code, modify it or find something else to use.

If D is going to evolve, we need to hurry up and finish that process, so that D's code base can begin growing.