named arguments, string interpolation, please stop.

[Timon Gehr]

On 1/11/24 19:02, deadalnix wrote:
> ...
> There is a design mistake I see people making again and again, and it 
> goes way beyond software: they design for what their current most 
> satisfied users want.

This is perhaps a mistake if your primary goal is to increase your user 
base, but on the other hand popularity is mostly a function of marketing 
and inertia, technical merit is of lesser importance. Keeping your 
current users happy is therefore also important.

> But that's really dumb, these people are already happy with the product!

I think it's a bit more complicated than that in the context of an open 
source project. Those people can afford to use a project whose potential 
has not been fully realized and they can actively participate in shaping 
the product, which is part of the value proposition. You are not going 
to be able to keep people engaged enough to fix long-standing tricky 
issues that do not impact them a lot if they cannot even make an impact 
on something they care about that would be simple to implement.

> Anyone in this forum fall into that bucket, by 
> the way. You got to observe how D is used int he wild by people not 
> frequenting this space.

Well, that is pretty hard to do. I don't know most of those people, so 
this is not something that is actionable to me. The subset that I do 
know prioritize similar things to be fixed or improved that I do.

> What problem do they encounter? What frustrates 
> them? What make the stop using it? These are the people you want to 
> design for if you want to actually improve the product.

In any case, I think everything on your list (and probably anything 
further that will come to mind) also improves the experience for 
existing users. They are just maybe not the blockers they had been in 
your experience for everyone and/or they are hard to fix due to 
technical debt.