Dicebot on leaving D: It is anarchy driven development in all its glory.

Andre Pany andre at s-e-a-p.de
Sun Aug 26 18:11:57 UTC 2018


On Sunday, 26 August 2018 at 13:40:17 UTC, Chris wrote:
> On Sunday, 26 August 2018 at 08:40:32 UTC, Andre Pany wrote:
>> [...]
>
> No. Nobody forces you to use the latest version that may have 
> an improved GC, new library functions or bug fixes. In fact, 
> why bother with improving the language at all? But how do you 
> feel about code that you've been compiling with, say dmd 
> 2.071.2 for years now - including workarounds for compiler 
> bugs? Doesn't the thought of having to upgrade it one day 
> bother you at all? What if your customer said that 2.08++ had 
> better features asking you to use them?
>
> The burden of finding paths to handle deprecations etc. is on 
> the user, not the language developers. And this is where the 
> psychological factor that Laeeth was talking about comes in. If 
> you're constantly programming thinking "Whatever I write today 
> might break tomorrow, uh, and what about the code I wrote in 
> 2016? Well, I'll have to upgrade it one day, when I have time. 
> I'll just keep on using an older version of dmd for now. Yeah, 
> no, I cannot benefit from the latest improvements but at least 
> it compiles with dmd2.st0neage. But why worry, I'll just have 
> to get used to the fact that I have different code for 
> different versions, for now...and forever."
>
> You can get used to anything until you find out that it doesn't 
> need to be this way. You write unexciting Java code and hey, it 
> works and it always will. It took me a while to understand why 
> Java has been so successful, but now I know. It's not write 
> once, run everywhere. It's write once, run forever. Stability, 
> predictability. And maybe that's why Java, Go and once C++ 
> prefer a slower pace.
>
> I just don't understand why it is so hard to understand the 
> points I and others have made. It's not rocket science, but 
> maybe this is the problem, because I already see, the point to 
> take home is: There are no real problems, we are just imagining 
> them. Real world experience doesn't count, because we just 
> don't see the bigger picture which is the eternal glory of 
> academic discussions about half baked features of an eternally 
> unfinished language that keeps changing randomly. Not 
> practical, but intellectually satisfying.

I reaĺly like new features, for new projects I also consider to 
use the latest stable dmd version (2.xx.1 or 2.xx.2) if there 
aren't any known issues.
For legacy coding I do the math: does the new features, gc 
improvements,... worth the time = money. I can also decide to 
upgrade every 5 releases, but only if it worth the investment.

I want to stress, the upgrade is fully in the hand of the 
developer and the decision can be made on costs and benefits.

My opinion might be very optimistic, but I feel some opinions in 
this thread are rather pessimistic.

Kind regards
Andre


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