Polishing D - suggestions and comments

[Jesse Phillips]

On Fri, 25 Jan 2008 18:57:17 +0100, Lars Ivar Igesund wrote:

> Dan wrote:
> 
>> 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.
>>> 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 emphasize the word *standard* because right now, we don't have a
>>> standard. Unless you include a bunch of versioning/mixin hacks, we
>>> currently have code that won't even compile on different workstations
>>> because of two very different core libraries that are totally
>>> incompatible. So now we're stuck with an annoying rift. Tangobos is a
>>> step in the right direction to get compatibility back, but at the
>>> moment it's just a band-aid solution.
>>> 
>>> 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. But this
>>> isn't going to happen unless one of the dev teams concedes already :|
>> 
>> Fair assessment.  I think Tango is more open source and takes the load
>> off Walter.  It's just simply too heavyweight for me to dare use it; so
>> library developers go to Tango and library users still go to Phobos.  :
>> p
> 
> I am just curious, what do you consider to be too heavyweight about
> Tango? Or why do you think it is too heavyweight?

I still have yet to develop in Tango (My book should be here within the 
week), but I think I know what Dan is trying to say by heavyweight.

It is not related to the size or speed of the code, as Sean was 
questioning, but in the use. The best comparison I can think of is that 
it is like going from C to Java. (I'm not saying Tango is like java) The 
phobos library is very procedural, you you import your module and call 
your functions. Tango is Object based, import, create object/call object 
to do something for you. There is a sense of simplicity when you don't 
use objects. That is frankly one of the reasons I have not moved to Tango 
yet.