Vision for the D language - stabilizing complexity?

[Ola Fosheim Grøstad via Digitalmars-d]

On Thursday, 14 July 2016 at 14:11:25 UTC, Chris wrote:
> On Thursday, 14 July 2016 at 13:39:48 UTC, Ola Fosheim Grøstad 
> wrote:
>> On Thursday, 14 July 2016 at 13:26:06 UTC, Chris wrote:
>>> Such a language will never see the light of day.
>>
>> Many such languages exist.

Didn't I say that I don't have time for a long rant? :-)

Simula is a pretty good example. In it's first incarnation it was 
a simulation language, then it was reformulated as a general 
purpose language.

Dart is a pretty good example. The extensions have been primarily 
syntactical AFAIK.

TypeScript is a pretty good example of a language that is both 
stable and wildly expansive, as the core language is JavaScript 
and TypeScript is a layer above the core language. It is getting 
pretty good actually.

Go is a reasonable example (despite the error handling blunder). 
It has not changed much in terms of the core language and IIRC it 
is based on earlier languages by the same authors.

The JVM is also a decent example of a core language that is 
fairly stable. It as based on the StrongTalk VM.

I could go on for a while.

> ... and they're all usable as in I can write software with them 
> right now.

Plenty of languages are usable, both Pony and Pure are usable, 
but they are not widely used. So it currently does not make much 
sense for me to use them as they most likely would cause more 
trouble than they would save me.

> Examples?

Slices etc.

> Yes, exactly, they were never meant to be big languages, just 
> scripting tools. Same happened to Python in a way. It should 
> never have left the lab and infected millions of people.

Python was informed by an educational language, but was designed 
to appeal to professionals, so I don't think it applies to Python 
as much.


> There's never _the_ perfect time to deploy a language, just 
> like there's never _the_ perfect time to buy a computer, the 
> moment you leave the shop it's out of date.

Huh, I don't understand the comparison?

Anyhow, I don't upgrade until I hit some unacceptable performance 
issues. I have a 4 year old computer and have no performance 
issues with it yet. :-P

There is very little advantage for me to have a faster computer 
than where the software is deployed.


> You're dreaming of a language that only exists in cloud cuckoo 
> land and it will get you nowhere.

Nope. Such languages exits, but they are not _system level_ 
programming languages.


> But of course, it's much easier to criticize the players on the 
> pitch from your comfy armchair than to actually go onto the 
> pitch and play yourself.

What makes you think that I am not playing? What you actually are 
saying is that one should not make judgments about programming 
languages or try to influence their direction.

> No language ever gets it 100% right, because there are 
> conflicting demands, and it's trivial to point out flaws that 
> are bound to arise out of conflicting demands.

What conflicting demands do you suggest applies to D?

I don't see them, so I hope you can inform me.