D1 to be discontinued on December 31, 2012

[Andrei Alexandrescu]

On 12/13/11 7:52 AM, Don wrote:
> On 10.12.2011 22:19, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
>> In order to increase focus and unity in the language, we are
>> discontinuing support for D1 on December 31, 2012. That's more than one
>> year away, which gives enough time to D1 users to migrate libraries and
>> applications to D2.
>
> I thought we had moved away from these kinds of unilateral decisions.
> I strongly oppose this decision. In particlar, I find the lack of
> community consulatation deplorable.

Apologies for this being so sudden. This was deliberate as there would 
have been no way to achieve consensus in the matter. People prefer 
having choices and postponement options, and are generous with others' time.

Allow me to recap the reasons why I think this is a necessary move.

1. We can't serve two masters. Working on two languages at the same time 
was non-committal and artificially sustained a rift in the community. It 
also diffused our focus, delayed us to an ever-increasing extent, and 
sent the wrong message out that we're lacking confidence of what our 
core thrust is, so we're trying to sort of please everyone. ("Here's our 
flagship language! If you don't like it, well, we have another one.")

2. The deadline is more than a year away. This is a long time, enough 
for us to make D2 compelling, and also for interested people to migrate. 
I much prefer to give a 12-month warning in December than a 6-month 
warning in June. Most importantly, it _is_ a deadline, which means 
people (including us) can plan things ahead.

3. Ceasing support does not mean D1 becomes useless on December 31, 
2012. There are many companies that use discontinued compilers for their 
codebase until they find enough reasons to migrate.


Thanks,

Andrei