Any chance to call Tango as Extended Standard Library

[John Reimer]

Hello dsimcha,

> == Quote from Daniel Keep (daniel.keep.lists at gmail.com)'s article
> 
>> Piotrek wrote:
>> 
>>> Lars Ivar Igesund wrote:
>>> 
>>>> Tango will stay Tango (and tango.*). The above naming assumes that
>>>> Tango will depend on Phobos, and it will not.
>>>> 
>>> I see.
>>> 
>>> Cheers
>>> 
>> (Note: speaking as merely an infrequent contributor to Tango; my
>> opinion
>> is my own and does not reflect on those of the Master Dancers, or the
>> ruling council of glittery-shoed programmers.)
>> (Warning: semi-rant ahead.)
>> The problem is that Phobos and Tango are diametrically opposed in
>> almost
>> every conceivable way.  Bringing them together would be like trying
>> to
>> bring matter and anti-matter together; you're just going to blow
>> yourself up.
>> It's best if you think of Phobos as being Python and Tango as being
>> Java.  Phobos implements a relatively flat (if messy) hierarchy of
>> simple, fat classes.  For example, IO is done using the Stream
>> interfaces, each one implements all the methods you'd probably need
>> to
>> work with streams.
>> Tango, on the other hand, implements a very deep (if confusing)
>> hierarchy of simple, component interfaces that get plugged together.
>> Unlike Phobos, IO in Tango has many layers and components, each of
>> which
>> is very narrowly defined, allowing you to plug them together however
>> you
>> like.
>> The problem is that neither of these approaches is WRONG.  They're
>> both
>> valid and arguably better in certain circumstances.  What's more, the
>> continued existence of both shows that there are people who believe
>> in
>> each of them (not necessarily at the same time, but there you go.)
>> So let's say we combined them into std.* and stdex.*.  Why is Tango
>> stdex?  Why isn't Tango std.* and Phobos stdsimple?
>> Ok, ignoring egos, the problem is that they wouldn't work together
>> anyway.  An old favourite of mine is (again, sorry about this) IO.
>> Phobos strives to be compatible with the C IO library; so you can
>> interleave Phobos and C IO calls and it's all gravy.
>> Tango takes C out the back and shoots it before burying it
>> upside-down
>> at a crossroads with a steak through the heart and salting the earth.
>> You CAN mix Tango and C IO calls, but you really have no idea what
>> order
>> the output's going to arrive in.
>> I remember Andrei getting antsy about this a while back; why break
>> compatibility?!  Because Tango's IO was faster this way.  Neither one
>> of
>> them was 'right' because they both had legitimate points of view.
>> Really, it all boils down to this: there *is no* one right way.  Yes,
>> it's more confusing.  But it's a problem with programming in general;
>> programming is all about looking at your options and making a
>> decision
>> on the matter.
>> -- Daniel
> Wow.  Excellent analysis.  One thing I'd like to add is that Phobos
> tends to be
> much more focused on the bleeding edge, with pretty much all
> development happening
> on the D2 branch, while Tango is more focused on targeting stable
> compilers.
> Also, another way I would summarize the situation is that Phobos
> focuses on first
> making simple operations simple first and foremost, and then worries
> about making
> complicated operations possible, while Tango does just the opposite.



I don't know if that is strictly true.  In Tango's defense, I believe it 
has tried quite hard to move in the direction of making simple things simple 
even under the restrictions of its own philosophy :).  If you examine the 
progression of Tango revisions, there has been a significant "cleanup" in 
progress that appears to be simplifying what was originally verbose.



> I've said this before, but I think it's not so bad for D to have two
> standard libraries with different design philosophies, at least in
> principle, though the inability to use both side by side on D1 is
> obviously a bad thing.  There are times when I like the Phobos "keep
> it simple, stupid" approach and times when I want Tango's "everything
> but the kitchen sink" approach.  There are a few things that I think
> would help a lot here:
> 

> 1.  Both Phobos and Tango should adopt these opposite design
> philosophies, which are true de facto anyhow, officially.  This will
> prevent excessive feature envy and duplication of effort and allow
> newcomers to determine which is best for their everyday use.
> 


Like I said, I believe Tango has worked harder at doing this than you might 
think.  I don't think Phobos cares to look at the opposite philosophy because 
it really doesn't merge well with it's intended goals.  Tango can afford 
some brevity because it started at the verbose end.


> 2.  The creation of druntime so that Phobos and Tango can be used side
> by side is a huge step forward.  Once D2 is out of alpha and Tango is
> ported to D2, people will be able to use their preferred lib most of
> the time and the other when their preferred lib has some missing
> functionality.  This will also greatly simplify 3rd party libs.
> 


This somehow parallels my original thinking too which I've mentioned before. 
 I am all for the druntime, and it certainly will be a net gain if both Tango 
V2 (if it ever surfaces complete) and Phobos can share it once D2 is stable. 
  But I'm afraid, it is still a grave difficulty for new users to face two 
different libraries.  Now that I've waited and think about it longer, I'm 
not sure what to make of it.  How does one promote this twin package deal 
for D.  I predict that the first person that finds a clever way to promote 
D 2.0 and it's shiny new twin-library / pick-your-style feature will be a 
D hero forever. ;-)   


No, it's not bad.  It's just rather... new... and it will take some very 
fancy promotion to get people to digest it.  I'm not sure if I'm up to the 
challenge.   That said, I guess I'm kind of jumping to conclusions if I even 
attempt to figure out what the D team is going to do about this.  Maybe they 
have no plans to ship two libraries together.  They may just continue to 
ship d2.0 with Phobos only... in which case Tango will indeed become a third 
party library.  Perhaps for the best?  I really don't know.


-JJR