The Case Against Autodecode

[cym13 via Digitalmars-d]

On Thursday, 2 June 2016 at 13:06:44 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu 
wrote:
> Your claim was obliterated, and now you continue arguing it by 
> adjusting term definitions on the fly, while at the same time 
> awesomely claiming to choose the high road by not wasting time 
> to argue it. I should remember the trick :o). Stand with the 
> points that stand, own those that don't.

> Definitely. It's a fine line to walk; this particular decision 
> is not that much on the edge at all. We must stay with 
> autodecoding.

If you are to stay with autodecoding (and I hope you won't) then
please, *please*, at least make it decode to graphemes so that it
decodes to something that actually have some kind of meaning of 
its
own.

> I think we have underperformed and we need to do radically 
> better. I'm on lookout for radical new approaches to things all 
> the time. This is for another discussion though.
>
> There are many components to the decision, not only 
> compatibility with old code.
>
> It's funny that evidence for the "overwhelming" support is the 
> vote of 35 voters, which was cast in terms of percentages. Math 
> is great.
>
> ZombineDev, I've been at the top level in the C++ community for 
> many many years, even after I wanted to exit :o). I'm familiar 
> with how the committee that steers C++ works, perspective that 
> is unique in our community - even Walter lacks it. I see trends 
> and patterns. It is interesting how easily a small but very 
> influential priesthood can alienate itself from the needs of 
> the larger community and get into a frenzy over matters that 
> are simply missing the point.
>
> This is what's happening here. We worked ourselves to a foam 
> because the creator of the language started a thread entitled 
> "The Case Against Autodecode", whilst fully understanding there 
> is no way to actually eliminate autodecode. The very definition 
> of a useless debate, the kind he and I had agreed to not 
> initiate anymore. It was a mistake. I'm still metaphorically 
> angry at him for it. I admit I started it by asking the 
> question, but Walter shouldn't have answered. Following that, 
> there was blood in the water; any of us loves to improve 
> something by 2% by completely rewiring the thing. A proneness 
> to doing that is why we self-select to be in this community and 
> forum.
>
> Meanwhile, I go to conferences. Train and consult at large 
> companies. Dozens every year, cumulatively thousands of people. 
> I talk about D and ask people what it would take for them to 
> use the language. Invariably I hear a surprisingly small number 
> of reasons:
>
> * The garbage collector eliminates probably 60% of potential 
> users right off.
>
> * Tooling is immature and of poorer quality compared to the 
> competition.
>
> * Safety has holes and bugs.
>
> * Hiring people who know D is a problem.
>
> * Documentation and tutorials are weak.
>
> * There's no web services framework (by this time many folks 
> know of D, but of those a shockingly small fraction has even 
> heard of vibe.d). I have strongly argued with Sönke to bundle 
> vibe.d with dmd over one year ago, and also in this forum. 
> There wasn't enough interest.
>
> * (On Windows) if it doesn't have a compelling Visual Studio 
> plugin, it doesn't exist.
>
> * Let's wait for the "herd effect" (corporate support) to start.
>
> * Not enough advantages over the competition to make up for the 
> weaknesses above.
>
> There is a second echelon of arguments related to language 
> proper issues, but those collectively count as much less than 
> the above. And "inefficient/poor/error-prone string handling" 
> has NEVER come up. Literally NEVER, even among people who had 
> some familiarity with D and would otherwise make very informed 
> comments about it.
>
> Look at reddit and hackernews, too - admittedly other 
> self-selected communities. Language debates often spring about. 
> How often is the point being made that D is wanting because of 
> its string support? Nada.

I think the real reason about why this isn't mentioned in the
critics you mention is that people don't know about it. Most 
people
don't even imagine it can be as broken as it is. Heck, it even
took Walter by surprise after years! This thread is the first real
discussion we've had about it with proper deconstruction and
very reasonnable arguments against it. The only unreasonnable 
thing
here has been your own arguments. I'd like not to point a finger 
at
you but the fact is that you are the only single one defending
autodecoding and not with good arguments.

Currently autodecoding relies on chance only. (Yes, I call “hoping
the text we're manipulating can be represented by dchars” chance.)
This cannot be anymore.

> Currently dfix is weak because it doesn't do lookup. So we need 
> to make the front end into a library. Daniel said he wants to 
> be on it, but he has two jobs to worry about so he's short on 
> time. There's only so many hours in the day, and I think the 
> right focus is on attacking the matters above.

...

> Andrei