Biggest Issue with D - Definition and Versioning

[mist]

On Wednesday, 18 January 2012 at 22:15:25 UTC, Adam Wilson wrote:
> On Wed, 18 Jan 2012 13:57:58 -0800, Walter Bright 
> <newshound2 at digitalmars.com> wrote:
>
>> On 1/18/2012 1:27 PM, Patrick Stewart wrote:
>>> How about putting equal effort in keeping existing D users? 
>>> There is more
>>> than one blogs online of ex D users with some pretty solid 
>>> arguments why they
>>> abandoned D. And those args are usually not some missing 
>>> shiny feature X but
>>> feature Y D already has but it is broken.
>>
>> I do attach far more importance to that than to reasons people 
>> who never used D do not use D.
>>
>>
>>> Just saying focusing on bright future is not excuse to forget 
>>> about imperfect
>>> now.
>>
>> I'm not saying it is.
>>
>> The point is, we have limited resources. We have to put those 
>> resources where they will have the most effect.
>
> I would argue that what would have the most effect is a 
> concerted effort to stabilize the compiler. That means 
> normalizing the differences between DMD/DRT, the Spec, and 
> TDPL. That means taking a break from anything new (regardless 
> of how badly we want them ... *COFF*COFF*), doing a thorough 
> audit of the open issues and prioritizing compiler issues 
> first. Then dedicated a release or three to doing nothing but 
> fixing those issues. There are 2719 open issues in the 
> bugtracker; that number alone will scare off many potential 
> users. And the number of ICE's is much higher than it really 
> should be to call DMD stable. In open-source terms, DMD is 
> beta. I'm leaving out Phobos here specifically because it 
> doesn't interact with the compiler nearly as much as the 
> runtime does.
>
> I would also argue that the above point is even more important 
> in light of the fact that DMD has such limited resources. 
> Accurate and efficient targeting of those resources is crucial 
> to D's survival. New features, while exciting, only introduce 
> the opportunity for new bugs and regressions. But without a 
> stable compiler a language is just a theory and some 
> mathematical proofs.
>
> Once we have a stable compiler it gets much easier to build out 
> libraries of code. These libraries are what really sell the 
> language as they not only provide a preexisting toolbox for new 
> developers, but also show that the language is mature enough to 
> reliably handle complex bodies of code. Also once a stable 
> compiler exists writing coherent documentation also gets much 
> easier as the number of undefined and undocumented behaviors is 
> significantly reduced. Ideally the documentation would have 
> been written first but at this point I think it is way to much 
> work for said limited resources to document and code at the 
> same time.
>
> To be honest, I think this is the end-goal that Andrei is 
> shooting for in his "Planning Software?" thread...

Can't bypass without saying "+1".

I have been following D development for almost 2 years and most 
of the time this is what I was really _dreaming_ about. What 
prevents me most from using D other than for small experiments is 
not really lack of/unfinished features, but very unclear 
development processes. I have been reading newsgroup silently and 
attentively for about half a year before got any slightest 
understanding of what is really happening.

Just personal feeling, of course.