D3 is potentially damaging

[Jonathan M Davis]

On Wednesday, May 02, 2012 03:08:32 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.
> 
> 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?

There are not currently any plans for a D3. If and when we decide that it's 
time that we want to introduce breaking changes into the language, then we 
will look at creating a D3. What that will or won't entail will be determined 
then. It could easily be 10 years off, if it will even happen at all. We don't 
necessarily want to be slaves to backwards compatibility (C++ has shown how 
that can be both good and bad), but how that will be addressed is an open 
issue which doesn't matter until we actually start looking into creating D3, 
and that's years off from now.

D2 is stabilizing. We do not intend to add major features or breaking changes 
to the language at this point except where necessary to finish stabilizing it. 
In the future, new, backwards-compatible features may be added, but what 
happens with that remains to be seen. If at some point, we decide that it's 
worth adding features which break backwards compatibility, _then_ is when we'd 
look at creating D3.

People keep bringing up D3 at least in part, because there are features or 
other changes that they want in D which will never make it into D2. _If_ they 
ever happen, it'll be in D3, but precisely because D3 is so far off - if it 
ever happens at all - there's no reason to worry about it at this point.

- Jonathan M Davis