Biggest Issue with D - Definition and Versioning

[Michel Fortin]

On 2012-01-15 01:06:23 +0000, Jonathan M Davis <jmdavisProg at gmx.com> said:

> On Saturday, January 14, 2012 14:58:19 Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
>> IMHO, fixing const postblit (and the last mile of const) an immediate
>> issue, followed by shared and threads. In light of that, working on simd
>> now appears even more like a waste of time.
> 
> I completely agree that const and shared issues are more important than SIMD,
> given that they affect far more people and have to do with some of the most
> frustrating bugs. So, I'm not sure that this work on SIMD is particularly
> well-timed. But I very much doubt that it's a waste of time. It could really
> help make D acceptable to some of the folks who would otherwise insist on
> using C or C++ for efficiency. And it's definitely addressing the complaints of
> some of D's users. Still, I'd very much like to see the remaining core
> language issues resolved sooner rather than implement enhancements like this
> right now.

Still, Walter perfectly has the right to decide on what he wants to 
work. I understand that he saw implementing SIMD as an interesting 
challenge, and if working on SIMD keeps things interesting for him, 
that can only be great.

Fixing long standing bugs is boring stuff compared to that. Yes it's 
important, but does it needs to be Walter doing it? Even for an issue 
requiring a language change, couldn't someone design the language 
change, implements it, and create a pull request for it? Then it'd be 
up to Walter to look at it, ask for amendments, then accept it or 
reject it…

Looks good in theory, but in practice this approach hasn't worked very 
well for pull request number 3.


-- 
Michel Fortin
michel.fortin at michelf.com
http://michelf.com/