std.xml should just go

[Andrei Alexandrescu]

On 2/4/11 3:15 AM, Don wrote:
> Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
>> On 2/3/11 7:56 PM, BLS wrote:
>
>>> I got more and more the feeling that the D2 monster was made just for
>>> ranges. The smart and elegant D1 design is definitely dead an gone. I
>>> think I am not the only one who would prefer a D1 plus instead of D2.
>>> bjoern
>
>> All in all it's fair to say that if you hate ranges you're going to
>> dislike D2, and there's little that can be done about that.
>
> Yes, but...
>
> I think we really, really, need to work on making Phobos less daunting.
> Right now, we have most of the functionality. But some things are
> unnecessarily complicated -- some are historical, some are workarounds
> for compiler bugs (many of which are now fixed), some are rough edges in
> the language definition which could probably be fixed.
>
> We don't have many examples; many discussions and explanations assume
> too much familiarity with terminology and concepts from functional
> programming languages; and probably most importantly, we don't have
> tutorials.
>
> All these things can and will be fixed. But right now, the learning
> curve is horrible, and it's a major turnoff for people.

Absolutely. There are some major strides we have and can make, enabled 
by recent bug fixes and language improvements. For example a lot of 
things are made considerably easier by auto returns. Then I think 
relaxing the rules for eponymous templates would tremendously reduce 
code size for a variety of templates. Finally, eliminating bugs and 
undue limitations from the language will again allow us to simplify 
things a lot.

With documentation and tutorials I am confident the entire community 
will help in time.


Andrei