Isn't it about time for D3?

[Mike B Johnson via Digitalmars-d]

On Sunday, 11 June 2017 at 00:37:09 UTC, ketmar wrote:
> Adam D. Ruppe wrote:
>
>> On Sunday, 11 June 2017 at 00:06:13 UTC, Joakim wrote:
>>> Dev resources are stretched thin as it is, I doubt the core 
>>> team would go for it.
>>
>> I think dev resources are thin because of mismanagement by the 
>> core team failing to attract and retain contributors. Part of 
>> this mismanagement is a really discouraging attitude toward 
>> positive yet breaking change; I propose that mere willingness 
>> to shake up the status quo would help to solve the resource 
>> shortage.
>
> actually, some time ago i proposed to create "experimental and 
> breaking language changes" subforum, where people can go with 
> their wild ideas, and other people can post patches/builds with 
> those (or other) ideas imlemented/half-implemented.
>
> this way we can gather some feedback from someone who is really 
> using new feature, and have a better vision if it worth further 
> time investments or not. 'cause having a live compiler with new 
> feature to play with is not the same as simply dicussing the 
> possible feature in NG. i maintain my private fork of 
> dmd/druntime/phobos, and this is the way i evaluate features: 
> just add what i can, and then see if i'll start using it in my 
> code. if not, the feature is cutted, otherwise it is retained.
>
> and ah, building dmd from sources is not something many people 
> want/can to do. sure, downloading binaries from random people 
> over the net is not the safest thing to do, but if there will 
> be patch+binary combos, it may work.
>
> i.e. i see that "experimental" subforum as a place for ideas 
> *and* implementations. and implementors can provide built 
> binaries for people to play, or other people can build binaries 
> ('cause if you built it for yourself, why don't share it with 
> others?).
>
> i know that this forum is actually a newsgroup, and it can't 
> host files. but i believe that this problem can be solved -- 
> either by using some simple js-free (for download; yeah, there 
> are such things! ;-) service to host binaries, or by some other 
> means.

Yeah, sounds good, because to make progress, progress has to be 
made. Most people are very shortsighted and live in a fear based 
mentality. Mention any type of change and they nearly shit 
themselves and never actually think about the consequence of 
those changes. They just assume it means change and it's 
something they can't handle.

Having an "experimental" D allows those crazy and potentially 
"mind altering" advancements to be worked on, advanced, and 
polished. It takes time for ideas to grow(because, ultimately, it 
involves learning and learning takes time).

So, the good experimental changes will eventually be adopted. 
Without such a mechanism, they can't EVER be. The problem is that 
only the core people of D actually get to decide what is good and 
they tend to push through changes that haven't been well 
tested(regardless of what they think, D is a prime example by all 
the miscalculations as is C).

Most people fear growth because growth requires change and change 
ventures in to the unknown... The unknown is where all the good 
shit lies and the breakthrough is when someone brings the unknown 
in to the known.