We are forking D

[Walter Bright]

On 1/9/2024 3:14 PM, Paolo Invernizzi wrote:
> I've the impression that things are slowly moving on, and right now it's a pivot 
> point for D history, just like as it was turning it open source, or the joining 
> of Andrei and the first book, something similar.
> 
> You, Walter, created an incredible useful language (and a beautiful one!), so 
> you have all my respect, it's clear in my mind how big the effort was in the 
> past, and still it is: I've followed your effort since pre D1.
> 
> A fork can revitalise D, as Rust, and the flourishing of other new modern 
> languages shock C++ , I think all the best about Adam, he is able to produce an 
> incredible amount of code that actually DO the job.  I will not bet against the 
> failure of OpenD, ironically Adam is VERY pragmatic.
> 
> And pragmatism was what first attracted me to D,  pragmatic view about problems: 
> we have a big problem right now, so let's try to find a way to resolve it in a 
> pragmatic way.

I appreciate your thoughts on this. One issue is that, as D has become more 
complex, it also is inevitably going to move more slowly. A lot of effort is 
needed to keep from breaking stuff and to try not to box ourselves into a corner 
with a feature-of-the-moment. (Autodecoding was a box we put ourselves in, arrggh.)

For example, quite recently, there was a storm on the n.g. about not fixing 
existing problems, but instead adding new features.

We decided to stop adding new features for a while, and concentrate on backing 
and filling what we'd already done.

For example, I posted a spec on pattern matching and option types, but that is 
on hold until we get some more backing and filling done.

As an example of backing and filling, we merged several PRs that re-enabled 
deprecated features, in order to better support older code. We've amended our 
mission now to do the best we can to not break existing code. It's kind of an 
invisible feature, it doesn't generate any excitement, its effect is just in not 
making people mad (!).


> The D programming language does not need another Kenji event.

There's a non-public story about what happened with Kenji. He has chosen to not 
leave an explanation, and I respect that by reciprocating. I hope he has done 
well and prospered since leaving us.

P.S. I don't reject proposals just because they come from Adam. I recently 
approved his standalone constructor proposal, because he competently addressed 
all my issues with it.