What's the current state of D?

[Leandro Lucarella]

Walter Bright, el  8 de mayo a las 11:56 me escribiste:
> Steve Teale wrote:
> >I am not criticizing you. I think you are doing a great job under the
> >pressure of a slew of suggestions. But maybe a line in the sand at
> >some point?
> 
> But there *is* a line in the sand - D1.
> 
> >OK so for those who crave stability there is D1.x, but when all the
> >focus appears to be on D2, what level of confidence is afforded to D1
> >users. Can a project Manager cross his heart and say that D1 will
> >still be alive and well in five years time?
> 
> This just makes me very frustrated. Every fix going into D2 that also applies to D1 has been folded into D1. There are even some fixes that only apply to D1 
> that only go into D1. These average about 20 per month. D1 even got the FreeBSD port before D2. What other language gets that kind of support?

D1 is INCOMPLETE (for example pre/post conditions inheritance are
missing). I tend to forget which features are there for real what aren't
(there are a few, true, but still).

Another very *BIG* issue is lack of mainstream tools support.

C++98 was finished before starting C++0x. A lot of effort was made to make
mainstream tools to support C++. Most tools demangle C++ names (even when
they aren't standard!). At least GDB should be able to do that, and
Valgrind and GNU binutils, if you want people to be comfortable working
with D. There are patches here and there but nothing works out of the box.

I think what D1 is *really* missing is that 2 things: completeness and
tools support. Without that is really hard to take it seriously.

I think the D team should be working more in that direction before
finishing D2. I know is very boring comparing it to making D2, but I think
that is what is transmitted from D maintainers: "D1 is boring, don't pay
attention to it, D2 is fun, let's play with that!". And this is what
happening. People are playing with D2 and forgetting to finish D1.

The Tango vs. Phobos is still a *BIG* issue for D1. I think don't
addressing that is a huge error. It's only hurting D1 and preventing its
adoption.

The result is 2 incomplete, unsupported (by mainstream tools) languages.

-- 
Leandro Lucarella (luca) | Blog colectivo: http://www.mazziblog.com.ar/blog/
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
GPG Key: 5F5A8D05 (F8CD F9A7 BF00 5431 4145  104C 949E BFB6 5F5A 8D05)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
No existe nada más intenso que un reloj, ni nada más flaco que una
bicicleta. No intenso como el café, ni flaco como escopeta.
	-- Ricardo Vaporeso