Long-term evolution of D

[Sean Kelly]

Don Clugston wrote:
> Sean Kelly wrote:
>> Brian Hay wrote:
>>>
>>> The specification of the D Programming Language is largely a 
>>> one-person effort, albeit with much community input, and I think at 
>>> the present time it benefits from this model, given Walter's 
>>> extensive language knowledge and compiler implementation experience. 
>>> But what happens when D does become the success we all know it can 
>>> be? Is standardization (ISO, ECMA etc) an option?
>>
>> I've begun to think that the standardization process may simply not be 
>> a good fit for software, simply because of how slow it is.  While it's 
>> a welcome assurance that a language isn't going to change out from 
>> under you, the alternative seems to be that it is unable to keep up 
>> with changing requirements.  That said, I would be pleased to 
>> eventually see D accepted as some sort of open standard, but perhaps 
>> not with the 5-10 year cycle apparently required by the ISO process.
> 
> I really like the way that dstress is becoming a defacto standard 
> compliance test. The standard could be simply be, "must pass all tests 
> in dstress", rather than the absurd C++ situation where parts of the 
> standard are unimplementable. Defining a standard via tests seems to me 
> to be more appropriate to software than the legalese that standards 
> bodies inevitably generate.

But as a language user, I like having the legalese available to know 
what should and should not be possible.  From the language specs I've 
seen, the C and C++ versions are by far the best.  In fact, I refer to 
them for language issues far more than any other reference material. 
But I agree that implementing by spec alone is perhaps not ideal as it's 
impossible to eliminate room for interpretation, particularly when 
concepts are used that have little direct relation to compiler design 
(such as sequence points in C++).  I think it helps D quite a bit that 
the language is being designed by a compiler writer as there's little 
risk that any of its features will be meaningless to one ;-)


Sean