cross post hn: (Rust) _ _ without GC

[ketmar via Digitalmars-d]

On Tue, 23 Dec 2014 14:16:25 +0000
Vic via Digitalmars-d <digitalmars-d at puremagic.com> wrote:

> On Tuesday, 23 December 2014 at 04:06:33 UTC, ketmar via 
> Digitalmars-d wrote:
> > On Tue, 23 Dec 2014 03:32:11 +0000
> > Vic via Digitalmars-d <digitalmars-d at puremagic.com> wrote:
> >
> >> Hence a prediction: major things will be moved out of core to 
> >> 3rd party plugins to slim down the lang, because now it's more 
> >> than a lang: it is a platform.
> >
> > D is not a platform. besides, GC is a core feature of D.
> 
> As per http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Java_%28software_platform%29
> Java is a platform as per wikipedia. D, I'll argue has more 
> features.
> Hence: D *IS* a platform. It is obese. Instead of 'what if 
> academics didn't write a language, but a compiler writer writes a 
> language, the new culture is: academics are writing a sugary 
> platform. (and do they use it on projects, a big part of open 
> source is that you use what you write, at their day job their 
> team use something else).
> 
> D 'has' a 'GC' for certain 'values' of working.  Data point:
> My company has 6 *full* time Sr Developers (15 years +) in 
> Silicon Valley - one of the larger commercial D users(sad) - so I 
> say that we use D (and only D) and for heavy lifting month in and 
> month out. So when all 6 tell me GC does not work .... (for 
> example allocate a large associative array and run a few threads 
> - I may present this example at the 'D meetup silicon valley' in 
> Jan meetup and publish example in git). So I tell you, when I see 
> focus of the volunteer maintainers on 'what can I add' and not on 
> 'what can I remove' it scares me to the bone as the CTO. 
> Difference w/ Linus and Walter? Both are smart, Walter is a nice 
> guy, and not a bastard.
> 
> So if maintainers decide that one of the thing to move is GC, one 
> way,not the only way, is IOC | DI pattern (you can look up DI and 
> IOC), it's doable, but it is like watching a fat person run 10 
> yards, they would rather eat a donut).
> Leave the method(init, destroy) hooks and ref counting in core. 
> People(p/t users of D) than inject the default GC(amateurs by 
> definition as they don't get paid to D). So it would be just like 
> now.
> 
> Professional teams/commercial users write a GC that fits that 
> situation, possibly create a D utils open source project - and 
> now you have an eco system of downstream open source projects and 
> commercial users doing heavy lifting in D and 3rd: the corner 
> case of people that use D just a little a few hours a week for a 
> few weeks in a year.
> 
> But, I don't know I'm saying move GC, I'm saying move somethings. 
> Exceptions like GO, the 12 generics features are sugary, etc. 
> just open up Andreii's book and go to town. If it's not GC, 
> remove something else to the point it is maintainable and 
> commercial users can lean on a working D. I am saying lots of 
> things should be moved, ex: split the compiler into core and 
> pre-compiler for the academic but still needed plugins.
> Also, people, I' am a user, so I'm just wagging the tail. Listen 
> to the maintainers as to the future direction, I focus on bigger 
> or smaller as the leading indicator of weather forecast of future 
> stability in D. I'm hearing C++ compatibility will be added, and 
> nothing will be removed. I'm hearing other features being added. 
> Did anyone hear of something being moved downstream? Nope. God 
> forbid users of D have to go to another git repo to get something 
> they require.

mind if i say that i don't give a shit about what "commercial users"
want? and the last thing i want is cutting out language features. yes,
"moving out of the core" == "cutting off". half-baked feature annoys
people, so eventually somebody will do something with it. non-existant
feature will remain non-existant for a long time.

as for "commercial users", once again... they can choose feature set
they want and then... yeah, invest money and time in them. make that
selected features work flawlessly. i still can't see why someone shoud
care about "commercial users" that never invest anything except "we
want XXX".

and i have a great way to know what "commercial users" really wants:
the things they are paying for. no, that's not working like "do what we
want and maybe we'll give you a cent or two". it's quite contrary,
actually: "here's the money we'll pay for what we want". FOSS is not
the box to which you shouting and then magically pulling the results
for free.
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