Is D really community driven?

[David L. Davis]

Bruno Medeiros Wrote:

> downs wrote:
> > The D homepage makes the claim that D "[...] is not governed by a 
> > corporate agenda or any overarching theory of programming. The needs and 
> > contributions of the D programming community form the direction it goes."
> > Recent discussions on the newsgroup regarding assert with Object 
> > references that might be null (no, segfault is _not_ a valid form of 
> > error checking ^^), CbD parameters or the older question of "!in" come 
> > to mind as cases where the D community, as represented by this forum, 
> > pretty much voted as a majority to introduce a certain behavior and 
> > Walter decided differently, out of reasons that many posters would, and 
> > did, disagree with.
> > 
> > So, the question is: is D really ultimately community driven? I have no 
> > real problem with it being a singular effort by Walter, but then he 
> > shouldn't claim that "the needs and contributions of the D programming 
> > community" et cetera. Unless he's saying he knows the needs of the 
> > community better than the community itself :)
> >  --downs
> 
> D, the language itself at least, is Inner Circle driven. (I say this 
> facetiously but seriously)
> Meaning that in the great majority of situations Walter only considers 
> the opinion of those of the Inner Circle, even when there is large 
> community consensus.
> I think the cases where Walter has actually changed the language upon 
> the opinions of the D community (aka the Outer Circle? :P ), was, in a 
> rough sense, when there was no parallel to C++ whatsoever, and thus 
> there was no influence or opinion from the Inner Circle or the C++ 
> community.
> Some examples that pop into mind: 'lazy', and the FQN, aliasing, 
> selective imports.
> 
> -- 
> Bruno Medeiros - MSc in CS/E student
> http://www.prowiki.org/wiki4d/wiki.cgi?BrunoMedeiros#D

   I recall that the setting a function's parameter to a default value as being one of those cases too.

David L. Davis