Vision for the D language - stabilizing complexity?

[Chris via Digitalmars-d]

On Monday, 18 July 2016 at 18:03:49 UTC, Mathias Lang wrote:
> 2016-07-18 15:48 GMT+02:00 Andrew Godfrey via Digitalmars-d < 
> digitalmars-d at puremagic.com>:
>
>>

>
> I've never seen a definitive "No" to breaking changes.
> We do breaking changes all the time. Did everyone already 
> forget what the
> latest release (2.071.0) was about ? Revamping the import 
> system, one of
> the core component of the language.
> But it took a lot of time, and experience, to do it. It did 
> deprecate
> patterns people were using for a long time before (e.g. 
> inheriting
> imports), but its a (almost) consistent and principled 
> implementation.

Although it can be a PITA, people accept breaking changes, if 
they really make sense.

> Way too often I see suggestions for a change with one (or more) 
> of the
> following mistakes:
> - Want to bring a specific construct in the language rather 
> than achieve a
> goal
> - Only consider the pros of such a proposal and completely skip 
> any cons
> analysis
> - Focus on one single change without considering how it could 
> affect the
> whole language

That's also my impression. Given that D is open source I'm 
surprised that nobody has grabbed it and come up with a prototype 
of D3 or whatever. How else could you prove your case? After all 
the onus of proof is on the one who proposes a change. Don't just 
sit and wait until Walter says "Go ahead", knowing full well that 
the core devs are in no position to dedicate time to D3 at the 
moment - that's too easy and it gets us nowhere.

> But I've never seen someone willing to put the effort in a 
> proposal to
> improve the language be turned away.
> In fact, our review process for language change was recently 
> updated as
> well to make it more accessible and save everyone's time. If 
> it's not a
> commitment for continuous improvement of the language, I don't 
> know what it
> is.