CTFE ^^ (pow)

[Jonathan M Davis]

On Sunday, March 18, 2018 18:15:28 Manu via Digitalmars-d wrote:
> On 18 March 2018 at 17:55, Jonathan M Davis via Digitalmars-d
> > I definitely agree with this. If the folks fixing stuff don't have the
> > same priorities as you, then there's a high risk that what you want to
> > be fixed won't get fixed, and that's often how things go with open
> > source projects.
> And here it comes again!
> I understand the reality, and echo-ing statement sounds so good to the
> community... but it's a terrible opinion to propagate if the goal is
> for D to be successful.
> You're effectively saying "D is a hobby/toy, therefore you can't bank
> on it with confidence". If I weren't a deluded zealot, there's NO WAY
> I'd let my business invest in this technology when the crowd endlessly
> repeats this sentiment.
>
> So, while it IS a practical reality, there needs to be very strong
> motivation from the community (and organisation) to combat that
> practical reality.
> I would strongly suggest; never say a sentence like this again. It's
> the wrong attitude, and it gives an undesirable impression to users.
> (assuming the goal is for D to be successful, and not a fun hobby for
> the devs)

Well, it's the reality of things are. And D can be used just fine in a
production environment. It's just that you have to be willing to deal with
the warts that come with the wonderful stuff. Anyone who isn't isn't going
to be very happy. The number of warts have definitely gone down over time,
but that doesn't mean that they're all gone, and depending on your
priorities, it may be that they're far too often not going away in the
places that you care about most. Either way, I'm not about to lie about the
state of things. The fact that we're dealing almost exclusively with
volunteers has a definite impact on what gets done and how it gets done.
We're not the first language to start out that way, and others ended up
being _very_ successful in the long run (e.g. it's my understanding, that
python started entirely as open source with no company backing and took
quite a few years to grow to the point that it had a significant user base).
We've made a lot of progress, but we also have quite a lot of work to do.

> > But at the same time, if you come to D, see all kinds of great things
> > about it, and think that it's going to be fantastic but keep running
> > into things that cause you problems when you try to use D, and then
> > those pain points don't get fixed even after years of dealing with the
> > language, that's going to be very frustrating - even more so if you've
> > invested a lot of time and energy into it.
> >
> > On some level, the only solution is to buckle down and fix your pain
> > points yourself, but that can also be quite frustrating.
>
> Or hire staff who are paid to work on 'boring' issues. I would make
> regular donations if I could be satisfied that my decade old issues
> would be addressed. I wonder how many others would too?

With how things seem to be going with the D Foundation, it seems
increasingly likely that something like this will happen. It wasn't all that
long ago that there was trouble having enough money to pay for the travel
expenses of folks going to dconf, let alone hire staff to work on stuff. As
I understand it, some money has already been paid for specific projects
(e.g. the new CTFE engine), but AFAIK, there isn't currently anyone being
paid just to fix bugs. That may come though, especially if folks are willing
to donate money specifically towards that end.

- Jonathan M Davis