standardization of D

[janderson]

David B. Held wrote:
> Ameer Armaly wrote:
>> Hi all. There are a few things which have been bothering me as of 
>> late, and I want your opinions on them to know whether or not I'm 
>> jumping at shadows. For starters, we all have a common goal of making 
>> D as widely used as possible since we all love the language, otherwise 
>> we probably wouldn't be here. At the same time, there are a few 
>> factors which as I see it make the adoption of D much more difficult 
>> and need to be addressed if we intend to succeed:
>> [...]
> 
> I think one thing to keep in mind is that the 1.0 release was basically 
> a gift to the user community to lend D that air of authenticity that 
> business folks need to let their people use a new toy.  In reality, 
> there are so many radical features being considered for D that it's 
> really comparable to C++ in its CFront stage rather than the ARM, let 
> alone, ANSI stage.  On the one hand, D needs users to push the language 
> to expose its weaknesses.  On the other hand, D needs the flexibility to 
> break some stuff to add compelling new features.  It's a tricky business 
> bootstrapping a new language, and only people who can tolerate life on 
> the bleeding edge survive in this kind of space.
> 
> D does indeed need a fair bit of time before it becomes sufficiently 
> stable to consider something like standardization.  Even choosing a 
> standard library would be premature, given that D has nothing like the 
> STL yet, though something is planned.  And having a wealth of choices 
> isn't a bad thing.  If functionality grossly overlapped, that would be 
> one thing.  But by providing libraries with different design 
> philosophies to appeal to different user segments, D can ease the 
> transition for more programmers.  If anything, now is the time to think 
> hard about what you think a language should have, and make a strong case 
> for your favorite features.  There's no guarantee your feature will get 
> implemented, but look how hard it is to get something added to a 
> language as big and mature as C++...
> 
> Dave

I couldn't have put it better!