Linux Agora D thread

Jonathan M Davis jmdavisProg at gmx.com
Fri Oct 22 00:33:15 PDT 2010


On Friday 22 October 2010 00:09:31 Walter Bright wrote:
> Jonathan M Davis wrote:
> > In any case, that poster seems knowledgeable enough that I don't see much
> > point in arguing with him. His opinion obviously differs from that of
> > most of us on this list, but it's generally based quite soundly on
> > facts, so only time will prove him wrong.
> 
> Sure, but it all depends on how one interprets those facts.
> 
> For example, C++ is hardly the same language it was in 1988 or so, when it
> became widely used. I don't think any pre-2000 C++ compiler would be
> remotely considered usable today. Languages that are not dead go through
> substantial revisions and upgrades. It is not a defect in D that it does
> so, too.
> 
> As anyone can see in the changelog, we've stopped adding features to D2 and
> are working on toolchain issues. There's been a lot of progress there.

Oh, I agree that he's wrong, and I agree that D2 is making serious progress, but 
he's got enough of his facts right that I don't think that he can be convinced 
by correcting what he's saying. I see value in correcting people if they 
misunderstand the situation, but trying to convince someone whose opinion differs 
when they have their facts more or less straight is likely to just result in 
heated arguments.

The fact that D2 is not 100% stable is, of course, not something that we want, 
but I do agree that it's completely understandable why D is the way it is at the 
moment and that it's not unreasonable for it to be that way. D is improving and 
it will eventually reach the same level of stability that modern C++ compilers 
enjoy. However, it's also pretty much a given that many people won't want to use 
D until it has a level of stability comparable with the compilers that they use 
for more mature languages. But there's nothing that we can do about that except 
continue to improve D until it reachs that point. And the more stable it 
becomes, the easier it will become to get people to try it and stick with it.

- Jonathan M Davis


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