Final by default?

[Andrei Alexandrescu]

On 3/12/14, 8:05 PM, Vladimir Panteleev wrote:
> On Thursday, 13 March 2014 at 02:48:14 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
>> On 3/12/14, 5:40 PM, Vladimir Panteleev wrote:
>>> From looking at the atmosphere in this newsgroup, at least to me it
>>> appears obvious that there are, in fact, D users who would be glad to
>>> have their D code broken if it means that it will end up being written
>>> in a better programming language.
>>
>> This is not my first gig. Due to simple social dynamics, forum
>> participation saturates. In their heydays, forums like
>> comp.lang.c++.moderated, comp.lang.tex, and comp.lang.perl had traffic
>> comparable to ours, although their community was 1-2 orders of
>> magnitude larger. Although it seems things are business as usual in
>> our little hood here, there is a growing silent majority of D users
>> who aren't on the forum.
>
> So are you saying that the users who participate on the forum are not
> representative of the entire D user base?

They are representative in the sense they're among the most passionate, 
competent, and influential of the user base. For the same reasons they 
are a couple of standard deviations away in certain respects from the 
majority.

> I.e. the % of users who
> wouldn't mind breaking changes is higher on the forum?

I believe so, and I have many examples. Most people who don't hang out 
in the forum just want to get work done without minding every single 
language advocacy subtlety, and breakages prevent them from getting work 
done.


Andrei