Thoughts on versioning

Ola Fosheim Grøstad ola.fosheim.grostad at gmail.com
Thu Oct 28 10:39:21 UTC 2021


On Thursday, 28 October 2021 at 09:48:42 UTC, SealabJaster wrote:
> I really appreciate this vision, but from experience of lurking 
> this forum, I can tell you that, particular the older 
> programmers, won't see much worth in a lot of your suggestions 
> regarding the compiler changes (assuming we'd ever even have 
> the manpower to make it possible in the first place).

Yes, there is a distance between those that still use emacs/vi 
and those that expect AI-like visualized editing. And this 
distance will only increase as editors become more "intelligent" 
over time and require better static analysis from tooling. The 
distance is increasing year by year, so it isn't even about 
status quo, but where will you be in 10 years? If there is a 
noticeable distance today, then there will be a huge distance in 
10 years.

Anyway, the compiler has hit an evolutionary wall. When the 
language can no longer evolve because of internal compiler 
structure then you need to change priorities; meaning design a 
new architecture and restructure/rewrite compiler components and 
freeze language changes.

The cost of modifying the compiler will increase over time if you 
don't change the architecture. The effort spent on making a 
compiler modular does pay for itself over time.

It is basically the difference between having a long term plan 
for the architecture or just evolve iteratively without a plan as 
you go along. There are few examples of the latter ending well.


> I believe that's similar to how the vision documents went. 
> "Here's a wishlist, please-maybe-possibly-if-you-want-to do it 
> Community, best of luck and lots of love - from, the D 
> foundation"

The vision document was too much of a list of details rather than 
a vision of the end-result. You need to have a strong vision for 
the end result in order to plan and make the best priorities.


> If only posts like this could come from those who have the 
> power, time, and motivation to organise a strong, coherent, 
> unified vision. And if only we had the manpower to make our 
> strongest wishes come true.

It is difficult to get manpower without first projecting a strong 
vision.

Anyway, kudos to Robert for putting a lot of thought into his 
post.




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