Plan for D

[Ola Fosheim Grostad]

On Wednesday, 19 May 2021 at 03:11:15 UTC, norm wrote:
> Changing requires effort but unfortunately the louder someone 
> bitches and moans on the forum the less effort they seem to be 
> willing to put in to fixing the issues they have. You can 
> contribute your ideas with PRs and DIPs today, or you can fork 
> the compiler and create PDAY, Perfect D According to You.

No, it is important to build common ground and make people 
understand key issues that the language has and make sure these 
ideas are understood and internalized. It is also important to 
get a wide variety of options on the table. D has been chasing 
the tail of other languages too much, it needs its own ideas. 
DIPs have limited value, because of veto power, you need 
preapproval + common ground. How do you make common ground 
without using the forums? You can use chat I guess, but that is 
very time consuming.

I am happy to see that some of the key issues I have had with the 
language is on the table now. I will probably write a DIP about 
type unification if nobody else beats me to it, but it should 
wait till after the most important weakness, memory management, 
is dealt with. So that DIP can wait... No point in shifting focus 
now, as memory management is difficult to get right in a 
competetive manner. Atila confirming that MM is on the plan was 
good to hear.

Yeah, I fork, but the compiler needs restructuring after 20 
years, like most software. It is currently "resistant to change" 
. Changing is still possible, but how do I rebase? The current 
structure limits how much you ought to change, so I only change 
stable parts... So my fork is in limbo until I am bored enough to 
find rebasing entertaining, probably october...

I mean I could restructure DMD myself, but how would I then get 
the DMD changes in?