[OT] What are D's values?

[Ki Rill]

On Monday, 4 October 2021 at 13:23:40 UTC, Paul Backus wrote:
> [...]

D is all about choice.

Many people feel frustrated with D: @safe, @live, @nogc, betterC, 
etc - what/when to use? They ultimately feel lost. But it's not a 
language thing.

D lets the programmer make the choices and helps him stay true to 
what he has chosen. D is like C - it trusts the programmer, but 
it also has the necessary mechanisms to ensure that the 
programmer does not stray from the path chosen.

Want to avoid the GC? Put @nogc at the top of your file. Do you 
want your code to be safe? @safe - is the way to go. Such 
mechanisms ensure you don't get lazy and start using the features 
you set to avoid.

Unlike Rust, D does not enforce anything upon the programmer. 
There is no path, schema, plan. You are your own boss. You decide.

D is all about choice. Every time we start a new project, we need 
to decide what D subset to use. I find D similar to Gentoo 
philosophy-wise. Systemd vs OpenRC? Etc.

I believe we need to somehow communicate this to the public to 
clarify all this confusion involved with D features.