At a crossroad

[Sjoerd van Leent]

Lars T. Kyllingstad Wrote:

> 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.
> 

I think you're right about this. Another problem is that projects who are/were active, don't get much support. I believe it scares people away. This is the main reason why my project stalled. It was originally a D1 project tailored towards Phobos, when D was still in it's infancy. But when Tango came around, I believed that my project became next to useless. There are some successors, and as thus I don't want to mess around creating something similar. But it appears that all those successors are tailored towards Tango, making my original approach valid again.

In my case, it wasn't about fixing code, but about a wholly different standard library, which my software simply didn't use at all.

> 
> > 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.

If this is going to be the case, I would be more than happy. This gives me a proper starting point to start constructing software. With software, I mean, basic software.

> 
> -Lars

I would urge that the projects which are dead or are seemingly dead, should be removed or at least hidden within DSource. If a forum is visited for the last time in 2007, I'm getting nervous.

I'm not trying to get the community upset. I just try to give a realistic projection about how the experience is.

Anyways, now I hope that I can just stick to phobos, I'll start development again.

With the last question: What is currently the most important thing that should be developed?