At a crossroad

[Lars T. Kyllingstad]

Sjoerd van Leent wrote:
> Hi Ary,
> 
> I think this is the issue. I'm not saying that D in itself is lacking anything. I think it is important to put an end to changing D (D2).

Although this has not been officially anounced, Andrei mentioned a while 
back that D2 and Phobos2 will be finalised in a few months, about the 
time his D book is published.


> What I'm concerned about is that many projects stall. Including a project I started, which is now completely incompatible with D2.

If one doesn't have the time to fix code that is broken because of 
changes in the spec or in Phobos, one shouldn't have started a D2 
project in the first place. D2 is *unstable*, and is meant to be so. It 
changes quite a lot, but this is a good thing. You can't expect Walter & 
co. to add a new feature and immediately freeze it, since you never know 
how well it works until a lot of different people have had the chance to 
test it over a certain length of time.

This also applies to the toolchain issue that has been mentioned several 
times of late. If you can't live without all the luxuries of a fully 
developed, stable toolchain, *don't use D2*. I completely agree with 
dsimcha that the language spec and the reference compiler has to be 
completed before anything else. Only then can people start serious work 
on the various parts of the toolchain, and *then* D2 is ready for 
mainstream work.

Regarding stalled projects, I think there is indeed a problem, but it 
has nothing to do with D2 development. A lot of (most?) projects die 
when their developers loose interest in or time for maintaining them. 
This is only natural. Unfortunately, these abandoned projects are listed 
together with the few active ones on DSource, and often one actually has 
to check the "last modified" date in the SVN browser to figure out 
whether it is dead or not. DSource is, in my opinion, in desperate need 
of a good cleaning-up. It is, after all, the main D development portal, 
and as such it is a huge part of the first impression people get of D.

Speaking from personal experience, I think this has a bigger negative 
impact on first impressions than the Phobos/Tango split.


> What I want to say is that before we miss our chance, we need to get D2 going.
> 
> I'm rightfully concerned about two main libraries (Phobos and Tango). It's next to being impractical, also very confusing. If I want to develop anything new, I want to know what I should and shouldn't use. So that others are able to use what I develop in a sensible way.

Personally, I think Andrei and the others have done (and are doing) a 
great job with Phobos2. This is, and should be, what is referred to as 
the "standard library". In my opinion, Tango for D2 should be 
constructed as a 100% compatible extension to Phobos. With the emergence 
of druntime, this should be easier than ever.

-Lars