Unofficial wish list status.(Jul 2008)

[Sean Kelly]

== Quote from superdan (super at dan.org)'s article
> Sean Kelly Wrote:
> > == Quote from bearophile (bearophileHUGS at lycos.co)'s article
> > > 4tuu4k002 at sneakemail.com:
> > > > This is the monthly status for the unofficial d wish list:
> > > ...
> > > It's curious to see that many or most of the top desired things don't seem among the list of the next things
> > planned as improvements/changes for the D/DMD. I don't know what this means. Are people asking for
> > unimportant things? Are the D designers smarter? Are the two groups ignoring each other?
> >
> > For better or worse, I don't personally feel that the D designers listen to the D community
> > at all.  Certainly not since D 2.0 was started at any rate.  Or perhaps it's just that my goals
> > with D simply diverged beginning with 2.0.
> wut the heck is ur problem sean, u were the only sane guy left at tango. now u r coming with badmouthing n shit.
recently u were like "walter is trying 2 lure people to d2. if that happens, i'm out." where the fuck did that conspiracy
theory come from. walter never did anything to put his integrity into question.

I was bothered by the fact that some issues that many people consider bugs in D 1.0 are only
being fixed in D 2.0, and I ignored my better judgement and shot my mouth off.  It was a
mistake.

> now wuts with this walter doesn't listen shit. whining baby. i'm sayin': walter does listen and does do great shit, the
only problem is that most of us don't know what we're talking about and can't remember what we want from 1 moment 2
the next.

No offense, but um... speak for yourself.  There are quite a few people here who are very
talented and whose comments are not only consistent, but very well considered and quite
well reasoned.  But Walter has said himself that he has difficulty working with people in
other than a face to face setting and it shows.  Back when Andrei was still posting here
someone asked what one should do to have a proposal considered or at least garner a
response and the process was laid out very clearly.  Since then, quite a few people have
followed that process exactly and I can't remember any of the proposals getting a comment
from either Walter or Andrei.  If a tree falls in the forest and there's no one around to hear
it, does it make a sound?  And if a proposal is posted and it doesn't get a single response,
has anyone read it?  I know it's difficult to keep up with the posts in this NG and impossible
to actually act on all of them, but even a "thanks" goes an incredibly long way in terms of
making people feel like their comments matter.

>look at that list. it's a pile of shit with the most prefuckingposterous requests in the fucking history of fucking
programming languages. look at vectorization. who the fuck came with that sick idea. hell, std.algorithm does that shit
better and nicer and didn't need language changes.

std.algorithm does vectorization?  I had no idea.  Don's BLADE (?) package does though
and it's totally awesome and also didn't require language changes, so the point is still
valid.

> > > When I think about such matters I remember a quote, usually attributed to Henry Ford: "If I'd asked people what
> > they wanted, they would have said a faster horse."
> > > So maybe D programmers want faster horses, while D developers are inventing/providing cars :-) I don't know.
> >
> > It's an interesting question, and one I've been mulling over for a few years now.  My
> > understanding is that C++ was created as a very community-driven effort right from the
> > start while D was designed based very much on what Walter thought would be good in a
> > language.  As a result, C++ ended up bogged down with a lot of legacy C baggage that the
> > community insisted was necessary for them to adopt C++, while D could change tracks on
> > the designer's whim and no one could say otherwise.  Generally, I think the D approach works
> > far better so long as the designer's goals match the interests of the community, but it's a
> > pretty risky path to follow since the designer is basically betting the farm on the hope that the
> > community will agree with his vision.  In the past I've been pretty free with my opinions about
> > language features and I do this because I don't want to feel that I didn't try to make myself
> > heard if I ever give up on D.  At least then I can feel that I did my best to communicate to the
> > designers what's important to me as a user of the language.
> u r wrong. bjarne has had control of language long time b4 it became successful. it's his vision 4 better or worse. u r
looking at the success years of c++ when committees and crap came all over. don't panic when d will be successful with
muggles there will be a committee over it like a cheap suit.

I suggest reading "The Design and Evolution of C++" if you haven't already.  It's pretty clear that
Bjarne validated much of C++ by asking influential C users about its features.

> so wut is that stuff u want in d. u haven't even tried d2 so it loox like u r interested more in bitchin' than in making real
suggestions. now seriously. speak up. what is it that u as a member of the community wanna say and walter doesn't
listen.

I've tried D2.  I've read the spec as well.  I simply don't like it.  As for my suggestions, feel free
to use the search feature in the digitalmars.com website, because many are here in this forum
or D.announce.  But you do have a point in that I have become quite weary of the D drama in
general.  I simply don't have the enthusiasm I used to, and that's entirely my own fault.  This
has been the longest I've ever worked on a personal programming project (at a guess, 4-5
years on Tango/Ares?) and I feel I've accomplished what I set out to do here, and that should
be enough.  I'll be better in the future about posting when I've had a bad day.  My apologies.


Sean