dmd codegen improvements

Mike Parker via Digitalmars-d digitalmars-d at puremagic.com
Thu Sep 17 01:06:10 PDT 2015


On Wednesday, 16 September 2015 at 14:40:26 UTC, Bruno Medeiros 
wrote:
> And on this aspect I think the development of D does very 
> poorly. Often people clamored for a feature or change (whether 
> people in the D community, or the C++ one), and Walter you went 
> ahead and did it, regardless of whether it will actually 
> increase D usage in the long run. You are prone to this, given 
> your nature to please people who ask for things, or to prove 
> people wrong (as you yourself admitted).
>
> I apologize for not remembering any example at the moment, but 
> I know there was quite a few, especially many years back. It 
> usually went like this:
>
> C++ community guy: "D is crap, it's not gonna be used without X"
> *some time later*
> Walter: "Ok, I've now implemented X in D!"
> the same C++ community guy: either finds another feature or 
> change to complain about (repeat), or goes silent, or goes 
> "meh, D is still not good"
> Me and other people from D community: "ok... now we have a new 
> half-baked functionality in D, adding complexity for little 
> value, and put here only to please people that are extremely 
> unlikely to ever be using D whatever any case"...

I find this assessment inaccurate. In my own experience, I have 
come to see Walter as Dr. No (in a good sense!) in that he has 
said no to a great many feature requests over the years. The 
instances where a feature was implemented that took the community 
by surprise have been rare indeed. And even then, we are not 
privy to the support requests and other discussions that Walter 
has with the businesses using D. I'm confident that what goes on 
in his head when deciding to pursue a change or enhancement has 
little to do with willy-nilly complaints by C++ users.


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