Polishing D - suggestions and comments

[Sean Kelly]

Jarrod wrote:
> On Wed, 23 Jan 2008 21:52:19 -0500, Daniel wrote:
> 
>> Walter is, and ought to be, focusing his efforts on the language more
>> than the libraries.
>>
>> Oddly, I would argue that all libraries are simply stop-gap fixes for
>> missing or poorly implemented language features; indeed most programming
>> code tends to be.
>>
>> However, D has phobos, there was mango, now tango, and work has been
>> done on a tangobos.  The fact that the library keeps changing shows that
>> D's language features actually have an impact, as they frequently
>> replace or integrate library features.
>>
>> Regards,
>> Dan
> 
> To claim Phobos is not a part of D is to claim the C stdlib is not a part 
> of C. 

Walter has said very explicitly on a number of occasions that he doesn't
like that the C and C++ language spec includes the library spec.  In
fact, I'm pretty sure this is the reason the Phobos documentation is
separated from the language documentation.  That isn't to say that there
is no value in a language having a specific standard library, but I
think it's somewhat of a different issue from that of them being defined
in the same spec.

> Phobos is a part of D, and it's a very important part of D too (hell we 
> can't even have classes without Object.d). Walter is the father of Phobos 
> and although he allows others to contribute to it, he is the one who 
> decides what to add to Phobos and how to add it. Yes, Walter should focus 
> on developing the language of course, but he also has to decide what the 
> *standard* library is going to be since he is after all the head project 
> manager of both Phobos and D.

I think one of the arguments for having the library spec exist separate
from the language spec is to provide a division of labor.  The C++
committee has a number of sub-committees dedicated to different areas,
but each change still needs to be voted on by the whole group.  I
certainly can't claim to speak for Walter, but were I in his place I'd
prefer to be in an advisory position for the library rather than the
principal maintainer.  It seems that things are moving a bit in that
direction with Andrei and Brad working on Phobos as well, but Walter
still has the appearance of being the go-to man for everything related
to D, which is a huge responsibility in terms of the time commitment
required.

> All I want to see is a standard, be it Phobos with all the cool stuff 
> Tango adds, or a Tango with all the nice things Phobos has.

Personally, I don't think a standard library must have every bell and
whistle.  Rather, I'd like it to provide enough of a programming
framework that libraries which follow the framework are likely to work
together very well, and for it to provide the most commonly used
features so I don't have to go searching for a third-party library for
every day stuff.  The C++ standard library does a decent job of this
with its iterators and algorithms, but it leaves too many holes in other
areas.  No one seems to be terribly fond of iostreams, for example, and
the design is difficult to adapt to more complex needs.


Sean