We are forking D

[GrimMaple]

On Tuesday, 9 January 2024 at 21:56:55 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:
> The trouble is there are some coding problems that only I can 
> resolve. For example, nobody else is crazy enough to have 
> embedded a C compiler into D. Heck, I thought it was a crazy 
> idea for a couple decades.

Have you ever considered that this is the case because you 
**deliberatly** created an environment where other people simply 
don't want to resolve problems? Do you think that getting your 
changes reverted enables positive thinking for trying to fix 
anything? Why bother fixing a difficult problem if, out of the 
blue, you're gonna show up and just revert stuff because you 
"can't grep properly".

> Would anyone else have implemented an ownership/borrowing 
> system for D? It exists as a prototype in the compiler now, 
> though it's been fallow for a bit as too many other things are 
> happening. I know its design is controversial (Timon doesn't 
> like it at all!), and it hasn't yet proven itself.

Has anyone ever **cared** about ownership/borrowing in a language 
that already fixed problems that borrowing fixes? Just use the GC 
-- and there isn't a need for ownership checks. The later part is 
just funny to me, because it reiterates what I said earlier: 
whenever it's a community accepted solution against just you, 
it's a no-go. When community is against something - you just push 
it in anyway.

> Many bugzilla issues get forwarded to me because nobody else 
> seems to want to or are able to fix them.

When you have the mentality of "I have the final say" -- of 
course nobody is gonna do anything. If you have the final say, 
you come up with a solution. Would you attempt to fix something 
knowing that your fix has a very good chance of being dismissed? 
I doubt so. Maybe out of enthusiasm, sure. But this enthusiasm 
only can get you so far. After some point you just give up and 
find a better use for your time.

Interestingly enough, being too involved in D made me somewhat 
afraid of making contributions at all. I was pleasantly surprised 
when my changes were **silently** merged into other projects 
despite me just dropping them out of nowhere. This is the way I 
see an open-source project shall be to have any form of success.

> I've been slowly working on restructuring the front end so it 
> is more understandable and tractable.

Funny you say this, because I had to update the compiler recently 
(to work on OpenD), and it started spitting out deprecations on 
my other code. And it's something that I've been complaining 
about for years, yet here we are. Updating the compiler even one 
version ahead gives me deprecations.