Biggest Issue with D - Definition and Versioning

[Andrei Alexandrescu]

On 1/14/12 9:06 PM, Jonathan M Davis wrote:
> On Saturday, January 14, 2012 20:54:55 Michel Fortin wrote:
>> 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.
>
> Sure. I can understand why the most important thing to work  on might not be
> the most interesting thing to work on. And Walter certainly has the right to
> work on whatever he wants to work on.

Exactly and perfectly right. To add to that, with my limited time, I can 
hardly afford to work on stuff that isn't fun (although lately I've done 
some of it - e.g. I'm not a web designer). There comes a point, however, 
when we need to decide whether our main priority is having fun or making 
D successful.

In the latter case:

1. SIMD is not the top of the list. Two weeks ago it wasn't _on_ the 
list. Now it's like the last 'copter outta Saigon.

2. We haven't identified game designers as a core market, and one that's 
more important than e.g. general purpose programmers who need the like 
of working qualifiers, multithreading, and shared libraries.

3. There was never a promise or even a mention that we'll deliver SIMD. 
We virtually promise we deliver threads and expressive qualifiers, and 
there's still work to do on that.

4. There was broad agreement that the main foci going forward would be 
quality, expressive qualifiers, shared libraries, Phobos work, and 
publicizing the language. We can't work with and publicize D's awesome 
concurrency design if parts of it aren't implemented.

5. The SIMD work has _zero_ acceleration on existing code; it only 
allows experts to write non-portable code that uses SIMD instructions. 
Updating to the next release of dmd has zero SIMD-related benefit to 
statistically our entire user base.

Walter and I spend hours on the phone discussing strategies and tactics 
to make D more successful. And then comes this binge. Doing anything on 
SIMD now is a mistake that I am sorry I was unable to stop. About the 
only thing that's good about it all is that it'll be over soon.


Andrei