Is @safe still a work-in-progress?

Jonathan M Davis newsgroup.d at jmdavisprog.com
Wed Aug 22 04:23:52 UTC 2018


On Tuesday, August 21, 2018 8:18:15 PM MDT Mike Franklin via Digitalmars-d 
wrote:
> On Wednesday, 22 August 2018 at 01:07:28 UTC, Mike Franklin wrote:
> > But what bothers me the most...
>
> Something else that rubs me the wrong way is that DIP 1000 is
> currently in a status of `DRAFT`:
> https://github.com/dlang/DIPs/blob/master/DIPs/README.md
>
> What the heck is going on here?  We're adding features to the
> compiler and modifying Phobos in production releases based on a
> `DRAFT` proposal?
>
> Furthermore, I find it hypocritical that some of us are put
> through a disproportionately burdensome DIP process requiring
> thorough documentation, multiple peer reviews, excessive delays,
> and judgement that defaults to "no" for some of the most minute
> changes to the language, but a game-changing feature like DIP
> 1000 can just be amended on a whim.

The reality of the matter is that the DIP system is a formal way to propose
language changes in order to convince Walter and Andrei that those changes
should be implemented, whereas if Walter or Andrei writes the DIP, they're
already convinced. This isn't a democracy. Walter is the BDFL, and it's his
call. So, I really don't think that it's hypocritical, but I also do think
that DIP 1000 probably should have gone through more peer review. From what
I can tell, outside of the simple cases, pretty much everyone has a really
hard time understanding it. The situation will likely improve once Phobos
properly supports it, and you can more reasonably use it, but the whole
thing defnitely seems to be overly complicated given what it's supposed to
be doing and what benefits you get from it. Personally, I think that it
seems pretty reasonable as long as user-defined types don't get involved,
but once they do, it's a mess.

- Jonathan M Davis





More information about the Digitalmars-d mailing list