Is it time for D 3.0?

[Russel Winder]

On Fri, 2020-03-27 at 16:55 +0000, Meta via Digitalmars-d wrote:
> 
[…]
> D has been around for 20 years and hasn't gained the traction 
> that younger languages like Rust or Go have (though as we all 
> know, the main reason for this is D's lack of a big corporate 
> patron a la Mozilla or Google). Maybe what's needed is a "new" 
> language that breaks backwards compatibility (as conservatively 
> as possible and hopefully in a way that makes it easy to 
> automatically port your D2 code).

Whilst D has not had the hype or the instant traction of Rust and Go,
it does have some traction and mindshare. This is based on it's
history, and it would (in my opinion) be a bad idea to lose this.

I think having a positive strategy towards a D v3 would be a good idea
but only if there are big breaking changes to D v2. The current Java
evolution strategy is fine, but it's version numbering is an
unimitigated disaster – in my view. Groovy has though had the right
evolution strategy and the right approach to version numbering – it has
fairly recently released v3 for all exactly the right reasons.

> Walter originally wanted to call it the Mars language - maybe 
> it's time to revive that name in a complete rebranding of the 
> language.

I think having a brand new language that just happened to have a very
simple upgrade path from D v2 would be a self-defeating activity.
People would very quickly spot the con.

If D has a future it is in terms of v3, v4, etc. with a strong
technical evolution (cf. Groovy) and good marketing. Clearly D
remaining at v2 for ever more would, I feel,  be a Very Bad Idea™ since
it advertises no changes to the language, i.e. a language with a
stalled evolution. 

-- 
Russel.
===========================================
Dr Russel Winder      t: +44 20 7585 2200
41 Buckmaster Road    m: +44 7770 465 077
London SW11 1EN, UK   w: www.russel.org.uk

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