Unofficial wish list status.(Jul 2008)

[Sean Kelly]

== Quote from bearophile (bearophileHUGS at lycos.co)'s article
> 4tuu4k002 at sneakemail.com:
> > This is the monthly status for the unofficial d wish list:
> ...
> It's curious to see that many or most of the top desired things don't seem among the list of the next things
planned as improvements/changes for the D/DMD. I don't know what this means. Are people asking for
unimportant things? Are the D designers smarter? Are the two groups ignoring each other?

For better or worse, I don't personally feel that the D designers listen to the D community
at all.  Certainly not since D 2.0 was started at any rate.  Or perhaps it's just that my goals
with D simply diverged beginning with 2.0.

> When I think about such matters I remember a quote, usually attributed to Henry Ford: "If I'd asked people what
they wanted, they would have said a faster horse."
> So maybe D programmers want faster horses, while D developers are inventing/providing cars :-) I don't know.

It's an interesting question, and one I've been mulling over for a few years now.  My
understanding is that C++ was created as a very community-driven effort right from the
start while D was designed based very much on what Walter thought would be good in a
language.  As a result, C++ ended up bogged down with a lot of legacy C baggage that the
community insisted was necessary for them to adopt C++, while D could change tracks on
the designer's whim and no one could say otherwise.  Generally, I think the D approach works
far better so long as the designer's goals match the interests of the community, but it's a
pretty risky path to follow since the designer is basically betting the farm on the hope that the
community will agree with his vision.  In the past I've been pretty free with my opinions about
language features and I do this because I don't want to feel that I didn't try to make myself
heard if I ever give up on D.  At least then I can feel that I did my best to communicate to the
designers what's important to me as a user of the language.


Sean