Final by default?

[Chris Williams]

On Thursday, 13 March 2014 at 00:48:15 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:
> On 3/12/2014 5:18 PM, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
>> We are opposed to having compiler flags define language 
>> semantics.
>
> Yeah, that's one of those things that always seems like a 
> reasonable idea, but experience with it isn't happy.

I would imagine that the reasons for this goal are 1) to keep the 
compiler and language sane, and 2) insufficient personel to 
maintain legacy variants.

I think the answer to #1 is to not introduce such changes lightly 
nor frequently.

For #2, since the codebase is now open sourced and, I presume, 
your "clients" pay you to perform specific tasks, legacy 
compilation features will end up being maintained either by 
random people who fix it themselves, or a client who based his 
code on an older version pays you to go into the legacy 
branch/build target code. This is the way most open sourced 
software works. Linux, GCC, emacs, etc. are all constantly moving 
targets that only through people paying Red Hat and others like 
them to make the insanity go away are able to work together as a 
single whole.