More radical ideas about gc and reference counting

Andrei Alexandrescu via Digitalmars-d digitalmars-d at puremagic.com
Mon May 5 21:09:21 PDT 2014


On 5/5/14, 8:19 PM, Manu via Digitalmars-d wrote:
> On 5 May 2014 14:09, Andrei Alexandrescu via Digitalmars-d
> <digitalmars-d at puremagic.com> wrote:
>> This is nice, but on the face of it it's just this: an idea on how other
>> people should do things on their free time. I'd have difficulty convincing
>> people they should work that way. The kind of ideas that I noticed are
>> successful are those that actually carry the work through and serve as good
>> examples to follow.
>
> There's imperfect but useful pull requests hanging around for years,
> extern(Obj-C) for instance, which may be useful as an experimental
> feature to many users, even if it's not ready for inclusion in the
> official feature list and support.
> I suspect it's (experimental) presence would stimulate further
> contribution towards D on iOS for instance; it may be an enabler for
> other potential contributors.

So it would be nice if you reviewed that code.

> What about AST macros? It seems to me that this is never going to be
> explored and there are competing proposals, but I wonder if there's
> room for experimental implementations that anyone in the community can
> toy with?

There would be of course room as long as there's be one or more 
champions for it. Would that be something you'd be interested in?

> UDA's are super-useful, but they're still lacking the thing to really
> set them off, which is the ability to introduce additional boilerplate
> code at the site of the attribute.

Interesting. Have you worked on a related proposal?

> I reckon there's a good chance that creating a proper platform for
> experimental features would also have an advantage for community
> building and increase contribution in general. If new contributors can
> get in, have some fun, and start trying their ideas while also being
> able to share them with the community for feedback without fear
> they'll just be shot down and denied after all their work... are they
> not more likely to actually make a contribution in the first place?

I'd say so, but we'd need initiative and quite a bit of work for such a 
platform. Would you be interested?

> Once they've made a single contribution of any sort, are they then
> more likely to continue making other contributions in the future
> (having now taken the time to acclimatise themselves with the
> codebase)?

I agree - and that applies to you, too.

> I personally feel the perceived unlikeliness of any experimental
> contribution being accepted is a massive deterrence to making compiler
> contributions in the first place by anyone other than the most serious
> OSS advocates.

Contributions make it into the compiler and standard library if and they 
are properly motivated, well done, and reviewed by the core team which 
is literally self-appointed. The key to being on the core team is just 
reviewing contributions. Have you considered looking at submissions that 
are "hanging around for years"?

> I have no prior experience with OSS, and it's certainly
> a factor that's kept me at arms length.

It's as easy as just reviewing stuff. Acta, non verba.


Andrei



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