Website message overhaul

[Timon Gehr]

On 11/19/2011 10:16 PM, Peter Alexander wrote:
> On 19/11/11 8:22 PM, Timon Gehr wrote:
>> On 11/19/2011 08:33 PM, Bane wrote:
>>> Peter Alexander Wrote:
>>>
>>>> On 19/11/11 2:02 PM, Bane wrote:
>>>>> I paused with D last year after (yet another) unsuccessful attempt
>>>>> to port my code from D1 to D2. reason: shared stuff. More specific
>>>>> reason - is it a bug with my code or docs ain't exact or that
>>>>> feature isn't working yet (even docs claim it works?)?
>>>>>
>>>>> So, I guess problem is correctness of manual for D2. Digging trough
>>>>> this newsletter to find is some feature working and how is terrible
>>>>> way for learning.
>>>>
>>>> I agree with this 100%. It is true that a lot of advertised features in
>>>> D simply do not work at all, and the fact that they don't work isn't
>>>> documented anywhere except in the newsgroups.
>>>>
>>>> In addition to making it incredibly difficult to learn the language, it
>>>> also dissuades people from writing tutorials. A couple of times I have
>>>> started to write tutorials and stopped simply because the stuff I wrote
>>>> didn't actually work (e.g. I'd write about selective imports, but then
>>>> figure out that they don't work as advertised). I don't want to write
>>>> tutorials that are filled with "D is awesome, you can do this... except
>>>> you can't."
>>>>
>>>> Things that don't work simply shouldn't be mentioned in the docs. Put
>>>> them on a "Work in progress" page or something so that people know what
>>>> should be working, but don't advertise them as working features
>>>> until at
>>>> least one compiler supports them.
>>>
>>> Yup. Learning D is just too difficult comparing to most other popular
>>> languages. My general feeling is that it is sloppy and too great
>>> investment for one to get to know its powers mixed with
>>> pain-in-the-ass quirks.
>>>
>>
>> There is 'D' the language and 'DMD' the implementation. You confuse the
>> two. The quirks you are talking about are DMD's, but the specification
>> is that of D. DMD needs to be fixed, and that is what the 'core people'
>> are working on.
>
> You are right, but DMD is the reference implementation and as such
> should implement everything in the language. Bugs are to be expected,
> and you may even expect to see some of the esoteric corner cases of the
> language unimplemented, but it is quite frustrating when many
> fundamental features are simply unimplemented or don't work as designed.
>
> If the reference implementation doesn't implement the language it claims
> to implement then at the very least it should still be marked as an
> alpha or beta version of the compiler, but that's not the case.
>
> At the very, *very* least there should be a note on the DMD download
> page that says that it is an unfinished implementation, with perhaps a
> link to a list of major unimplemented features.

I agree.