Isn't it about time for D3?

[jmh530 via Digitalmars-d]

On Tuesday, 13 June 2017 at 12:23:19 UTC, ketmar wrote:
> Sebastien Alaiwan wrote:
>
>> My point precisely was that "not splitting D1/D2" might 
>> correspond to "doing things right".
>
> "not splitting" here means "we're stuck with D1". deprecation 
> cycle of several years (not counting the time required to 
> actually *start* the process) means "no evolution".
>
> i must make myself clear here, i guess: i value "good language" 
> way more than "stable language". i absolutely don't mind fixing 
> my code if it makes it better/more clear/etc. while it's hard 
> to sell "constantly evolving" language to Big Enterprise 
> Wheels, not making breaking changes means cloning worst C++ 
> feature. ;-)

Companies clearly value C++'s backwards compatibility. However, 
if there's one lesson from the D1/D2 or the Python 2/Python 3 
split, it's that it's hugely disruptive (so much so that I find 
the idea of D3, at the moment, to be such an obviously terrible 
idea that I really wanted to avoid commenting on this thread). 
Nevertheless, C++ is still a constantly evolving language. C++14 
looks a lot different from C++98. Maintaining backwards 
compatibility, however, has significantly increased the 
complexity.

Thus, I think there's a trade-off. Breaking changes that improve 
the language may be good in certain circumstances, but 
Walter/Andrei should try to get the buy-in from big D users 
beforehand (even with a depreciation cycle). Requiring some kind 
of broad support from big D users would mean that breaking 
changes only happen if the the costs of breaking changes are 
smaller than the improvement to the language.