bool (was DConf 2019 AGM Livestream)

[Jonathan M Davis]

On Sunday, May 12, 2019 8:50:33 AM MDT Andrei Alexandrescu via Digitalmars-
d-announce wrote:
> On 5/12/19 1:34 PM, Nicholas Wilson wrote:
> > However in this case the community consensus is that the chain of
> > reasoning you have used to arrive at your decision is wrong.
>
> It's a simple enough matter to be understood, and reasonable to assume
> Walter is not missing any important facts or details. Poking holes in
> his explanations is, I confess, attractive, but ultimately are about
> debate skills rather than technical. I do agree that the way
> explanations on DIP decisions go could and should be improved a lot.

Really, what it comes down to is that Walter has a very different view on
what a bool is and what it means than many in the community. His explanation
makes it clear why he made the decision that he made. Many of us don't agree
with the decision, because we view bool and its purpose very differently,
but unless someone has an argument that would actually convince Walter to
look at bools differently, it's a pretty pointless discussion. It's
frustrating, and many of us do think that D is worse than it could be
because of the decision, but ultimately, Walter is the one in charge, and
that's just how it goes. This just highlights how the language is ultimately
controlled by the one or two people at the top and not by the community at
large. It's not a democracy, which on the whole is a good thing. If all
language decisions were made by majority vote, the language would be an
utter mess. But that does have the downside that sometimes something that
many people want doesn't happen, because those in charge don't agree. Such
is life. Fortunately, in the grand scheme of things, while this issue does
matter, it's still much smaller than almost all of the issues that we have
to worry about and consider having DIPs for.

Personally, I'm not at all happy that this DIP was rejected, but I think
that continued debate on it is a waste of everyone's time.

- Jonathan M Davis