D3 is potentially damaging

[Alex Rønne Petersen]

On 02-05-2012 03:08, ixid wrote:
> The idea of D3 is a worrying one- it suggests a number of things that
> would not be good for the success and adoption of the language. That the
> language is experimental and more of a pet project, that D2 has a
> shelf-life and will be abandoned. I can see D going in two directions:
> it can gradually grow and progressively gain areas where it's the
> standard choice or it will be a fairly small community of fans of an
> eternal language project. Python 2 and 3 has been a very messy split,
> while languages with a greater sense of continuity do better for it in
> my view, having one standard version of that language. Breaking changes
> may be desirable but I don't think labelling that as v2/v3 is a good
> idea, make it one thing with one suggested version.

I agree wholeheartedly. This whole "D3" excuse for not fixing design 
issues in the language is going to hurt us in the long run.

>
> What are the aims of D3 that aren't aims of D2? What could be done then
> that can't be done now? Wouldn't it be better to make breaking changes
> sooner rather than later?

Yes and no. In theory, it's good to stabilize the language now and make 
a new version of it later which has breaking changes. In practice, 
that's annoying as hell. We've already seen how slow the transition from 
D1 to D2 is (not was; it's still happening!). D2 to D3 is going to be 
even slower (see in particular your Python 2 vs 3 example) simply 
because more and more people are going to be using D2 and therefore 
can't afford to port their applications to D3.

-- 
- Alex