We are forking D

[Martyn]

On Tuesday, 9 January 2024 at 21:11:39 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:
> On 1/9/2024 9:42 AM, H. S. Teoh wrote:
>>  From a technical
>> standpoint, D has no parallels that I know of -- it comes very 
>> close to
>> my ideal of what a programming language should be.  But the 
>> way it's
>> managed leaves a lot to be desired.  It would be a pity for 
>> this
>> beautiful language to languish when under a different style of
>> management it could be flourishing and taking over the world.
>
>
> Thank you for the kind compliments about D. Perhaps one reason 
> it is such a nice language is because I say "no" to most 
> enhancements? D would have version algebra and macros if it was 
> a committee. Some features are great ideas, until you've used 
> them for 10 years, and come to the realization that they aren't 
> so good of an idea.
>
> Aesthetic appeal is a big deal. D has got to look good on the 
> screen, because after all, we spend most "programming" time 
> just staring at the code. I remember once attending a C++ 
> conference where the presenter had slides of his innovative 
> ideas, and I had the thought that there was no way to format 
> that or rewrite it so it looked good. I've had that experience 
> many times with C++.
>
> For example, one of the Tango features I rejected was creating 
> a clone of C++'s iostreams. I knew by then that iostreams was a 
> great idea, but it just looked awful on the screen (and had 
> some other fundamental problems). The modern consensus is that 
> iostreams was a misuse of operator overloading.
>
> D also restricts operator overloading to discourage using it as 
> a DSL (though Tango still managed to use it for I/O).
>
> I could go on with that, but that's enough for the moment.
>
> The end goal for me with D is that it will no longer need me.
>
> As for Phobos, I am not involved with it directly. There has 
> been a sequence of people in charge of it, but that hasn't 
> worked out too well. But there is a core team of 35 people 
> (though some are inactive) that controls what goes into it:
>
> https://github.com/orgs/dlang/teams/team-phobos
>
> They have the authority to decide what goes in Phobos or not. 
> I'm open to nominations to that team.
>
> Anybody can bring attention on the n.g. to any PR that is being 
> overlooked.


*Of course, I personally do not want to see this split at all. 
This is a rather serious issue where both projects can suffer.*

With regards to the Forked project - I am just sitting on the 
fence to see how it turns out. It could be successful and, if so, 
more power to Adam and contributors. If it fails.. even badly, I 
will still take my hat off for their attempted effort. We do live 
in an (internet) age where people like to bash and put people 
down. I refuse to be one of those people. Same can be said on 
this forum on a number of ocassions, and lots towards Walter and 
a few others.

Coming back to Walter - I do understand his position and his 
comment (above) confirms that this is the right mindset whether 
people like it or not. D **is** a very good language and I don't 
think Walter should just add new things if he is not 100% 
commited to it. Some things could be great at the time but could 
be a mistake in 10 years - and D will then be stuck with it.

I think the reason why I am not frustrated with certain features 
not making it into the language is because D has many of what I 
need. However I understand that there are people that dont agree 
and waited some time for progress of said feature with nothing as 
a result.

I do believe that *OpenD* will divert away from D pretty quickly, 
merging new features within the first 6 months. It will divert so 
quickly that even if there is a chance of agreement between the 
two projects, they are simply too far apart to put back together 
without some plan.

On top of this, *OpenD* could be including a bunch of things that 
I personally do not care about. It could change the direction of 
the language itself. This is why I am sitting on the fence. It 
might still serve my purposes or it (very much) wont.