D is our last hope

[Bruce Carneal]

On Saturday, 23 December 2023 at 06:18:16 UTC, Walter Bright 
wrote:
> To communicate a proposal to users, a specification is also 
> needed. Telling users to read the code isn't going to work.

Well, as a user I often click through to the source when reading 
Phobos and other D docs and rarely, if ever, do I read specs 
unless tasked with verifying compliance or with creating a 
de-novo implementation against an extant spec.  Fortunately, Adam 
already has working code and examples while Attila is, 
reportedly, hammering away on the spec.

I think this is a good way to do things.  An independent spec 
writer may shine a spot on some unexpectedly dark corners, some 
implementer "blind spots".

>
> A specification is needed to determine what the proposal is, 
> and what it is not. It is also used to judge whether the 
> implementation is correct or not.

Yes, but specs need to be "debugged" too, and directed testing 
against a working body of code can be very helpful there... 
probably much more helpful than a bunch of code-free language 
lawyering.

At the very least a working implementation with examples should 
let us skip past a lot of the "proof by assertion" noise 
regarding difficulty of implementation and marginal utility.

Here's hoping for swift understanding and a useful addition to D.