Compiler development

[bearophile]

James Miller:

> and most people don't have the compiler
> suddenly pull the rug from underneath them (unless they were 
> relying on the buggy behaviour).

Relying on "buggy behavior" (or on deprecated features) is not 
rare. An example:
http://d.puremagic.com/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=7736

Fixing this will cause some problems, and the more we wait, the 
more problems it will cause (and this stuff _must_ be fixed):
http://d.puremagic.com/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=3934

There are several other similar examples. Like enforcing 
properties and requiring override, and generally using deprecated 
features like complex numbers. The more we wait now, the more 
pain will be felt later.

Walter now likes to design D features strict at first and then 
"loosen" them later, this has worked quite well (this has 
happened with inout and pure). But Walter has not applied this 
strategy since the beginning on "tags" as shown in issue 3934, 
that are managed in an very very sloppy way now, and will need to 
be tightened later to produce a decent enough language.

Bye,
bearophile