It is the year 2020: why should I use / learn D?

[Chris]

On Friday, 23 November 2018 at 23:49:16 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:
> On 11/23/2018 4:59 AM, Chris wrote:


> Fixing autodecode will break about everything. But you don't 
> like breaking changes.
>
> What do you suggest?

If you put it this way, as you tend to, of course, I look like a 
lunatic. The breaking changes I don't like (and no-one does) are 
changes that seem completely random to the user. Normal, 
"innocent" code just breaks. It may be, because you're preparing 
feature X that will be available in a year or so and in order for 
it to work old code has to be sacrificed. If changes need to be 
made, let's do them in a sensible manner and not just walk over 
ordinary users' code. I'm under the impression that a fancy 
feature counts more than code stability ("Let the rabble clean up 
their code, we are pursuing a higher goal.")

autodecode, however, is a different beast. It is an essential 
flaw and thus needs to be tackled (or D will be forever flawed). 
I've proposed a transition via a dual system (legacy / new). It 
could be a switch like "-autodecode=off". No code needs to break, 
but those that are willing to make the transition could go ahead. 
The transition could be documented and there could be an 
automated tester that tells users later where / how much of their 
code would break and how to fix it, if they turn autodecode off.

But autodecode is not even open for discussion anymore.