Why Phobos is cool

[aberba]

On Thursday, 25 June 2020 at 14:27:02 UTC, Petar Kirov 
[ZombineDev] wrote:
> On Thursday, 25 June 2020 at 12:13:21 UTC, Paolo Invernizzi 
> wrote:
>>
>> I know that we are quite few on this side, but IMHO a well 
>> shaped standard library has advantages over a sparse ecosystem 
>> of independent library ...
>
> Who says that this is a binary choice? And also, the way you 
> fraise it it's obvious that say Flutter is better choice than 
> React as everything is very tightly integrated and you could 
> build your whole app without reaching for third-party code. 
> Also, it's obvious that in terms of trust, it's better to rely 
> on the diligence of the upsteam development team, than random 
> strangers from the internet.
>
> But what if 90% of the code my team needs has no place in 
> Phobos? We already have to rely heavily on third-party 
> packages. Yes there are a lot of risks and we try to be 
> careful, but we have no other choice. We could spend years 
> reiventing the wheel (high-quality code that already exists in 
> other languages), or we could focus on delivering products to 
> our users based on the already existing ecosystem in other 
> languages. Well, a choice would exist if we had an unlimited 
> budget, but given that we're not as lucky, we can only use 
> other languages for our projects currently.
>
> Technically, phobos is actually already on Dub 
> (https://code.dlang.org/packages/phobos), so in the future 
> nothing could prevent you to continue using it, but you would 
> just get it from there and not from the compiler distribution 
> archive. It's the same code, made by the same people, just with 
> a different distribution model.
>
> The way I see things is that we as a community need to focus on 
> a vetted, well shaped collection of libraries.
> We need to have process where third-party libraries are able to 
> gain broader support and join dlang-community. Also we need 
> dlang-community to have a healthy number of people who actually 
> maintain the code.
> We need the leadership to realize that investing just in dmd, 
> druntime and phobos is necessary, but very insufficient.
> W&A need to stop pretending that Dub doesn't exist. I feel that 
> unless we embrace using code.dlang.org as method of 
> distribution of everything that's currently part of the 
> compiler archive, Dub's limitations will never be addressed and 
> from that the broader community will suffer.
>
>> Anyway, if we can, we try to stick with Phobos, as long as we 
>> don't have a particular problem to solve that needs an 
>> external library: recent example, Martin std.io or SumType 
>> instead of std.variant ...
>
> See, some of the problems in Phobos already have a good 
> solution. The problem that we need to address is the trust.
> The more high-quality and well-maintained libraries there are, 
> the less cautious one would need to be before reaching to 
> code.dlang.org.


Almost the exact reason why i use JavaScript (nodejs) for work 
and not D. It takes more than a nice language. When some here say 
they don't use Dub or they don't care about dub packages, I'm 
wondering what kind of software they are writing.

In my line if work, it's highly dependant of availability of 
packages to get the job done. Encryption, networking, data 
manipulation, database connectors, socket, rest, cloud services, 
etc. Its more like glueing services and APIs together.

Unless you're building compilers and softwares that don't connect 
to internet, then it makes sense to not be bothered by the lack 
of certain packages on dub.

This will only happen when the community collaborates, which will 
only happen when there's a visible leadership push/backing. I 
meant D conf online has taken forever to happen and I'm not sure 
if community building is a thing prioritized at all.


I've been policing and trying several packages on dub...some, 
talking to their maintainers. I want to make this happen. Its the 
only way.

I rarely use core nodejs packages. Its like npm has got 
everything. Its what dub needs. Already I'm happy with quite a 
few dub packages. And there's huge!! room for improvement if only 
there's a visible official push. Its not always about money.

I'm not sure why we don't even have regular online community 
meetups. Yeah, there's people who would rather code and feel more 
productive that way. That's also fine.

Except there's another side about community building. DConf is a 
Joy to watch. Just the community interaction alone and how ideas 
are shared. It could happen more often. More often online.