Send me your list of D gripes and wishes

[Mike Parker]

Everyone in the D community has their own reasons for being here. 
We each have our own goals and plans, our own likes and dislikes, 
our own expectations and tolerance levels when those expectations 
go unmet, and so on.

When any given person's expectations aren't met over a period of 
time, whatever that period may be, frustration is understandable. 
But ranting in the forums about how Walter, or anyone involved in 
furthering D's development, doesn't care about the community is 
both unwarranted and unproductive. None of us would be here if we 
didn't care.

Discussions of D's problems and weaknesses, and the pet peeves of 
different D users, are scattered out across the forums, the 
community Discord, the IRC channel, Slack, and who knows where. 
When someone makes a general complaint in the forums, there's a 
certain amount of surprise and frustration when Walter asks for 
specific Bugzilla issues or links to past discussions, as if he's 
expected to have an eidetic memory.

The issues that you encounter in your code and frequently discuss 
with others in any given communications channel may be at the 
front of your mind, but that doesn't mean they are at the front 
of anyone else's mind. I certainly don't remember every complaint 
I've read about any given D feature. The issues at the front of 
my mind usually have nothing to do with any of that. I'm totally 
with Walter when he asks for specific details, or links to past 
discussions or Bugzilla issues. Otherwise, it's just noise.

So I have a proposal. Let's take a first step to bring some order 
to the chaos.

I invite every member of the D community to email me at 
social at dlang.org with your specific gripes about the current 
state of D and the things you'd like to see in the future 
(changes, new features, etc). But don't write in general terms. 
Be specific.

If your code is breaking every release, how is it breaking? If a 
certain language feature isn't working the way you expect, how do 
you expect it to work? Which unresolved issues have forced you 
into annoying workarounds, and what are those workarounds? What 
missing features would make your life easier? What are some 
important but unmaintained projects in the ecosystem that need 
attention?

Any D feature, any D tool or project in the ecosystem, is fair 
game. The important point here though is _please be as detailed 
and specific as you can_. Include any relevant links to Bugzilla 
issues or past forum discussions. I can always ask for more 
detail if I need to, but you'll save both of us time if you 
include it up front.

I will take this information as it comes in and look for 
commonalities and establish priorities. Over time, this should 
help me compile a list of actionable items that I can bring to 
future foundation meetings, and give us a starting point for 
serious discussions with community members on how we can solve 
specific issues that aren't so easily solved. And it will give 
the ecosystem management team a head start once they get off the 
ground. Moreover, I can post the list somewhere so that everyone 
can see it, and we'll all have a common point of reference and 
see the progress being made as issues are resolved.

By doing this, we can work to align the maintainers' goals with 
those of the community. I can't promise that Walter or anyone 
else on the team will agree that any given issue should be a 
priority, but I'm sure we'll identify a number of them. Nor can I 
promise that we'll be able to resolve any given issue in a 
reasonable time frame, given our lack of resources, but having 
them identified and prioritized is an important step toward 
ultimately resolving them.

I want to remind everyone that we're in this together. I would 
love it if we had a dedicated team of engineers who could 
methodically work through task lists. But we don't. Razvan and 
Dennis are doing a good bit of work beyond their primary job 
descriptions, like implementing approved DIPs that have been 
languishing unimplemented, but they don't have infinite time. So 
at some point, we'll need a few people to step up in one way or 
another.

But for now, just email me. Everyone in the D community who has 
the time and ability to post in the forums also has the time and 
ability to send me an email detailing their complaints. So 
please, don't be silent. Just redirect all that energy you've put 
into internet rants, or kept bottled inside as the case may be, 
into an email telling me all about your pain.

__PLEASE NOTE__: I won't be looking for your lists in this 
thread. If it turns into one of those multipage threads, I don't 
want to have to pick through every post looking for the details. 
__Please email me__. Then I can keep everything in one place with 
nice tags that make it easy for me to reference.