Whither Tango?

[Gareth Charnock]

dave eveloper wrote:
> Ezneh Wrote:
> 
>> So, it is not better to find a compromise between these libraries ?
>> Why they have to be "two" libraries rather than one which was designed by larsivi, Walter Bright and Andrei Alexandrescu ?
> 
> I haven't seen larsivi around lately. Is it possible that there's a communication problem? Perhaps a personality mismatch?
> 
> Because of silly symbol names like 'retro' I think there's more reason for someone to not like Phobos. Bearophile also always reminds us that a proper closure inlining support would make collection algorithms as fast as the ugly string template hack Phobos. That way you wouldn't have hard coded parameter symbols like a and b.
> 
> Wasn't Tango an object oriented hardcore framework for large applications, and Phobos a procedural simple stdio wrapper for smaller scripts. I think it wouldn't be so bad if there was a "Mini-d" dialect of D that has focus on programming in the small things and a "Mega-d" that comes with Java/C# like massive libraries and enterprise support.

Nooooooooo!!!

I think the above is the only way to succinctly express my opinions 
about forking. Yes the extra "o"'s and exclamation marks are needed! ;-)

There is nothing wrong with having two "standard", compatible libraries. 
It's kind of like having two libraries except you can always rely on 
them being there. Having libraries you can rely on is without having to 
worry about the download-build-install-add-to-makefile cycle is a good 
thing, especially while learning a language. And D needs all the 
libraries it can get its hands on.

Problems occur when two incompatible "standard" libraries exist, as has 
been apparent, but the should be fixed soon. In fact, I would say that 
making tango and phobos run together out of the box is probably one of 
the most important features of D2 if not the most important.

But two compatible libraries? It means you can choose which one suits 
you best, and if a library you are using uses the other, well that's 
there choice. Perhaps you use mostly phobos but then use tango for XML 
(which I hear is very fast).

I guess I can summarise my position as:

2 > 1