stability

[Edward Diener]

Bill Baxter wrote:
> Edward Diener wrote:
>> Bill Baxter wrote:
>>> Janice Caron wrote:
>>>> On 24/02/2008, Derek Parnell <derek at psych.ward> wrote:
>>>>>  However, how will we know if an application contains bugs if you 
>>>>> can't know
>>>>>  "what the designer intended it to do" in the first place?
>>>>
>>>> You could ask.
>>>>
>>>> Too easy?
>>>
>>> In fact that's exactly what happens.  People either ask here or they 
>>> file a bug report stating "this looks like a bug" and Walter responds 
>>> "no that's behaving according to design".
>>>
>>> I'm not sure why some folks are so adamant about the spec thing.  
>>> Perl, Python, and Ruby are quite popular, but none of them has a 
>>> detailed spec as far as I know.  And if they do, I'd bet that came 
>>> about /after/ they became popular.  So lack of a detailed spec did 
>>> not prevent widespread adoption.
>>
>> Python has a Python Reference Manual as part of eeach release. AFAIK 
>> that is the specification for end-users, and if there is something in 
>> the Python language which does not confrom to that reference manual it 
>> is considered a bug when reported to Python. The reference manual is 
>> firmly embedded in the documentation for each release and the 
>> documentation comes fully formed as part of an installation of that 
>> release. This is at what D must aim if it intends to become a language 
>> to be used by the end-user programmer.
> 
> That sounds exactly like the situation with D currently.  The current 
> version of the spec/documentation web pages ships with every compiler 
> release.  The Python Reference Manual doesn't look to be much different 
> in level of detail from the D spec web pages.

I wish it were true that the D documentation is at the level of detail 
for D that the Python documentation is for Python. But reality intrudes 
and in numerous places the D documentation is either incomplete, or the 
links which one supposes to exist are not there, and one has to ask on 
this forum where the information exists. There is even TBD still on a 
number of topics of the D 1.0 documentation although I am not sure if 
this exists for the D 2.0 online documentation. Finally one should be 
able to download all documentation as a help and/or PDF file to one's 
local computer and this is clearly not the case for D.

I will reiterate that it is supremely important for D, with each 
official release, to provide a complete set of language/library 
documentation for the end-user. Without that D will remain a niche 
language, despite the innovations which Mr. Bright has added to his C++ 
language base and the goodwill of those who support his language and his 
ideas.