Biggest Issue with D - Definition and Versioning

Andrei Alexandrescu SeeWebsiteForEmail at erdani.org
Thu Jan 19 08:10:04 PST 2012


On 1/19/12 3:25 AM, Manu wrote:
> On 16 January 2012 02:23, Andrei Alexandrescu
> <SeeWebsiteForEmail at erdani.org <mailto:SeeWebsiteForEmail at erdani.org>>
> wrote:
>
>     I do have ties with the gaming community; I taught a course at ENDI
>     and I am well acquainted with a few game developers. Also, at
>     conferences and events gaming programmers are represented. Finally,
>     game developers who are reading TDPL are likely to send me book
>     feedback and questions in proportion to their representation. From
>     where I stand, I can say there is more interest in D in other
>     communities than in gaming.
>
>
> I'd just like to add one more point, that gamedev is, in general,
> windows-centric. And D's support for windows is basically disgraceful.
[snip]
> You probably /won't/ hear from the gamedevs either until they are
> able to do anything more than dismiss it within 5 minutes.

This notion is akin to my "if we considered gamers a core market, we 
would have done a lot of things differently".

[snip]
> You lead me to an interesting though though...
> I have been realising one thing that is concerning me more and more
> though, and that is that for some reason, it always comes back to
> Walter. This seems absurd.
> Why should any feature be contingent on Walters time/excitement for the
> feature? He should be allowed to work on the SIMD if he wants, and it
> shouldn't significantly affect anyone. Is he being paid? (I don't
> actually know)

Walter is working full time on D. I and most others are working on it 
part-time. (I'm not counting people who work _with_ D.)

> I was initially under the impression that D was an open source language,
> and there were a significant number of contributors... if Walter were
> hit by a bus, what would happen to D?

That hasn't been an issue for a while now. There are several other 
people who know and understand the language, dmd compiler, and the 
standard library very well. But as of now Walter is the gatekeeper of 
fixes and features for the simple reason that he wants to still 
understand what's going on. This is a common approach. He's also the 
foremost decision maker for what major features go into the language.

> This point is highlighted by your anger/frustration that Walter worked
> on the SIMD stuff out of step. If you're the second(?) most authoritive
> voice around here, what does that say about the state of the language
> development and the team responsible?

To me it says we need to improve our organization.


Andrei


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