backporting features to D1

[Bill Baxter]

On Sat, Oct 11, 2008 at 11:07 PM, Christopher Wright <dhasenan at gmail.com> wrote:
> bobef wrote:
>>
>> Walter Bright Wrote:
>>
>>> Bill Baxter wrote:
>>>>
>>>> I think there was some hope that making a really stable D1.0 would
>>>> somehow make D1.0 an attractive choice for companies.  But come on.
>>>> It was a stretch when D1 was just a niche language.  Now it's a niche
>>>> language that's also obsolete.
>>>
>>> People made it clear they were not going to use a language for
>>> production if it got new features every month. D 1.0 is a complete and
>>> very usable language, with the goal of being stable and bug free.
>>>
>>
>> Are they going to use the language if it is practically dead? No new
>> features added, D2 too experimental and practically another language. D2
>> goes so far away from D1 that the task to port a big project seems very
>> unappealing. Plus it is a different language. I come from C++ and like D
>> because it fixes the stupidness of C++ while remaining fast and not too high
>> level. D2 becomes too high level for me... So what is the point to develop
>> for D1? To be honest what I read recently about D2 drives me off. I love D1
>> and I'd love to have some of the D2 features, but not D2. Now I hope for
>> something like LLVMDC that will keep D1 alive and maybe developing. I
>> brought this up before, but unfortunately Walter didn't respond
>> (http://www.digitalmars.com/webnews/newsgroups.php?art_group=digitalmars.D&article_id=76149).
>> I fully support Bill Baxter's post.
>
> The issue isn't the lack of new features, so much as bugs being labeled
> enhancements and not being fixed in D1.

Is there anything in that category other than the partial IFTI stuff?
I was thinking there were very few such cases, actually.

> If you want the new features, you can switch to D2, so I don't see that as a
> problem. (I want the new features, but I'm waiting for Tango support.)

I see three potential categories of D users:
1) bleeding edgers who want the latest and greatest -- don't care if
it breaks everything
2) want the latest stuff  -- but don't want it to break my code
3) want only bug fixes -- also don't want it to break my code

Right now we have editions of D to satisfy groups 1 and 3.  But I
really just can't understand the logic of someone who would be in
group 3.  Let's face it: deciding to use D at all is a huge risk.  But
it's worth the risk to some of us because of the *features* D offers
over the alternatives.  If you were willing to take the big risk to
use D, why then would you not want benefit fully from all the Goodness
D has to offer, if it only costs you a negligible bit of additional
risk?  I can totally understand not wanting to take the full risk of
D2, having been through many rounds of breakages in D0 compilers
myself, when that was the only game in town.  But features that have
been tested in D2 and which are backwards compatible with D1?  Why
would anyone be against those?  Sure some percentage of them are going
to have gotchas.  But then again some percentage of current D1
compilers have gotchas.  When that happens you just wait out a release
or two.  No major loss since D has new releases almost every month.


--bb