Module-level accessibility

[Don]

Daniel Gibson wrote:
> 2010/10/4 Sergey <smsmfk at gmail.com>:
>> bearophile, thanks you very much for your answer. I've heard that D has a
>> very vibrant community; now I know it really :)
>>
>> By now, from what I know about D I can draw a conclusion that it's a greatly
>> promising language with many innovations and I would say even fantastic
>> features and tools (e.g., contract-based programming). But such serious bugs
>> that are not fixed yet can disgust any programmer, I think. All the more
>> beginning programmers, like me. Probably D2 implementation is not grown-up
>> enough yet to be used in projects of a real importance...
>>
> 
> Do you really consider this bug (i.e. being able to access private
> members of another module) so serious or "disgusting" that it makes D
> unusable (or unenjoyable)?
> What's the big deal, just don't access private members (it's not like
> you have to) and your code will still work when the bug is fixed.
> 
> Cheers,
> - Daniel

I think he's concerned (quite rightly) that discovering such a 
significant unfixed bug indicates that the compiler is poor quality.
It's actually bug 314, which is infamous and by far the most voted bug 
in Bugzilla. It's important more because it looks bad, than because of 
the impact that it has in practice.

It's one of three remaining bugs which I've rated as showstoppers -- 
that is, a single bug that is so terrible or high-profile that people 
may lose interest in the language because of it alone. (The others are 
bug 3516 and 2451).

However, it's not really indicative of the state of the compiler. There 
are very few bugs which are even half as serious. You don't have to go 
very far down the list of most-voted bugs before you get to things which 
are merely annoying.