If I had my way

[Jonathan M Davis]

On Saturday, December 10, 2011 13:23:02 Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
> I think we have a great release in the making: 64-bit code generation on
> OSX, improved floating point arithmetic, and a bunch of bugfixes.
> 
> Yet, if I had my way, I'd stop the release until every single complaint
> of Mehrdad's recent rampage has been looked at and addressed. Sure, we
> can label Mehrdad as a whiny baby, but I suspect his experience is
> representative for the out-of-the-box experience of many others: they
> see D's cool features, they download the compiler to try it out on their
> own terms, and as soon as they deviate from what is tried and works, or
> they combine features in an unusual yet meaningful manner, it all comes
> unglued.
> 
> It's about time to make a statement of reconnecting with our community,
> and in particular to the whiny babies out there. Sure, the kind of stuff
> we have in this beta is useful. Floating point arithmetic benchmarks
> have long hurt us, and 64-bit generation on OSX is a gating issue. But
> simple, long-standing issues that make babies whine are very important,
> too, and require our immediate attention.
> 
> I vote for making a strong point of fixing these out-of-the-box
> experience issues raised before we move forward with this release.

I confess that I don't see the point in delaying the current release for this. 
It's nearly ready. It seems to me that it doesn't cost us anything to just get 
it out the door and move on. _Then_ we focus on these issues - and possibly 
release 2.058 sooner than we might otherwise.

Personally, it doesn't really affect me much either way, since I always use the 
latest from github, but I don't quite understand what delaying a release 
that's about to go out the door will buy us. Focusing on const-related bugs 
would buy us a _lot_. The situation _has_ been improving (e.g. inout actually 
started working with the last release), but there's no question that issues 
with const still remain.

- Jonathan M Davis