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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