DConf 2013 Day 1 Talk 7: Panel with Walter Bright and Andrei Alexandrescu

[Joseph Rushton Wakeling]

On Wednesday, 22 May 2013 at 13:44:10 UTC, Dicebot wrote:
> Eh, official definition of "breaking change" keeps breaking my 
> heart. But I guess this is a mindset set in stone now and 
> changing it is close to impossible.

Can you elaborate a little bit?

I felt personally that what the discussion didn't really address 
was that these days the "breaking" problems are primarily not 
with the language, but with the standard library, and this is not 
much less problematic.  Yes, it was mentioned, but not really 
considered in detail, and that's where a significant amount of 
attention needs to be.

You can extend this to spec -- whereas D as a language is 
substantially well defined, the standard library doesn't seem to 
be, and there are clearly areas where this needs to be addressed. 
  Just as one example, which strongly affects my own use of and 
engagement with D: the de facto behaviour of random number 
generators, which are implemented as value types despite there 
being strong reasons why they should instead be reference types.

I understand that resolving the last major language spec issues 
probably needs to be first priority, but I don't think this is 
the major _usability_ issue any more.