The new std.process is ready for review

[Jonathan M Davis]

On Saturday, February 23, 2013 18:58:28 H. S. Teoh wrote:
> I suppose std.proc is out of the question? ;-)

I don't know. Maybe.

> I find this rather frustrating... sometimes it feels like Phobos is
> suffering from premature standardization - we have a module with a
> design that isn't very good, but just because it somehow got put into
> Phobos, now it has to stick, no matter what. That's what we should do
> *after* we have a good design, but at this point, the current
> std.process clearly isn't ready to be cast in stone yet, yet we insist
> it can't be changed (at least, not easily). So every little design
> mistake that got overlooked in review and made it into Phobos becomes
> stuck, even when the design is really only experimental to begin with.

To some extent, I agree, but at the same time, we're taking forever to 
stabilize things, and unless we do, D will never take off, because no one will 
be able to rely on its API.

> I think we should seriously consider the idea someone brought up in this
> forum recently, of an experimental section of Phobos where new stuff is
> put in, and subject to actual field-testing (as opposed to just toy test
> cases when it was written), before it goes into Phobos proper.

I definitely think that this should be considered. I think that it's often the 
case that the stuff that makes it into Phobos was either created specifically 
for Phobos (and didn't get much use ahead of time), or it's someone's personal 
module that they thought would be useful (in which case, it may have gotten 
heavy use from them but not by many people besides them). And freezing APIs 
before they've been field-tested means that we'll be permanently stuck with 
subpar APIs.

> I really
> do not want to see this problem repeated over and over, and we end up
> with 15 modules with 2 or 3 appended to their name just because nothing
> can be changed after it's put in. It really detracts from D's
> presentability, esp. to outsiders and prospective new users, IMO.

I honestly wouldn't expect many modules to be replaced outright. It's mostly 
just the older ones which risk that. But if ever have to do that with modules 
that went through the full review process, then we need to rethink how that's 
done. A propationary area for modules (where they're in Phobos but not in std 
yet) may very well help mitigate any such problems.

- Jonathan M Davis