Hmm - about manifest/enum

[John Reimer]

Michiel Helvensteijn wrote:
> Lars Ivar Igesund wrote:
> 
>> If one were to have a "panel" of experienced users, one should strive to
>> have one with equally much experience in the various big languages (too
>> bad that it is hard finding anyone with 10+ years in Java and 5+ in C#).
>> As it is now, the overweight of C++ seems to be too big (from the
>> outside), which sounds doubly bad considering D is touted as a language
>> fixing C++ mistakes. Most C++-users I know refuse to even acknowledge that
>> C++ is bad.
> 
> C++ user here.
> 
> C++ and Java are both just hopelessly outdated. However, when C++ was new it
> was the best language of its type around. And after many years of use it
> has become extremely stable and reliable. Because it is so popular, it is
> also impossible to change the meaning of anything as often used as enum.
> 
> I will agree that C++ is not perfect. But it is not bad. If you claim it is,
> I'd like to hear some arguments.
> 
> At first I really liked the D specs. The explicit contracts / invariants /
> unittests, the useful template possibilities, the variadic functions, to
> name a few. But right now D seems far too unstable and convoluted for me.
> It's already past version 1, well into 2 and already planning for 3. Not so
> much fixing and stabilizing (or, you know, standardizing) the existing
> language as adding more and more features. I'm glad I have something as
> reliable as C++ to work with.
> 
> Now I will admit that I haven't used D for some time and am mostly going by
> what I read in this newsgroup. And I'll be happy to hear counter-arguments.
> 

There is a bit of confusion around D versions, and it seems to be a 
result of the versioning system in use.

* D 1.x represents the stable version of D; bugs continue to be fixed; 
no new features are added (nor are features usually removed).

* D 2.x is really just the experimental/developmental version of D 
(think 1.9999); it's not intended to be stable or even used for general 
development; new features are added, changed, and removed with almost 
every release.  I think it was somewhat of a mistake calling it D 2.0 
because it confuses people into thinking it's a final release.

-JJR