The Case Against Autodecode

[Jack Stouffer via Digitalmars-d]

On Sunday, 29 May 2016 at 17:35:35 UTC, Nick Sabalausky wrote:
> Unlike Python, we wouldn't be maintaining a "with 
> auto-decoding" fork for years and years and years, ensuring 
> nobody ever had a pressing reason to bother migrating.

If it happens, they better. The D1 fork was maintained for almost 
three years for a good reason.

> Heck, we weather breaking fixes enough anyway.

Not nearly on a scale similar to changing how strings are 
iterated; not since the D1/D2 split.

> It was an annoying pain (at least to me), but I got through it 
> fine and never even entertained the thought of just sticking 
> with the old compiler.
> Not sure most people even noticed it. Point is, in D, even when 
> something does need to change, life goes on fine. As long as we 
> don't maintain a long-term fork ;)

The problem is not active users. The problem is companies who 
have > 10K LOC and libraries that are no longer maintained. E.g. 
It took Sociomantic eight years after D2's release to switch only 
a few parts of their projects to D2. With the loss of old 
libraries/old code (even old answers on SO), all of a sudden you 
lose a lot of the network effect that makes programming languages 
much more useful.