D as A Better C?

[Peter Alexander]

On Tuesday, 11 February 2014 at 20:02:37 UTC, Frustrated wrote:
> On Tuesday, 11 February 2014 at 19:56:11 UTC, Peter Alexander
> wrote:
>> On Tuesday, 11 February 2014 at 19:43:00 UTC, Walter Bright 
>> wrote:
>>> What do you think?
>>
>> I think it would have little benefit and would just lead to 
>> pointless fragmentation and maintenance for the compiler devs.
>
> Do you program on embedded systems? If not then do you think you
> are qualified to say it would have little benefit or not?

I do program on embedded systems.

I'll elaborate more on why I think this is a bad idea.

First, we are struggling immensely as it is to get D2 into a 
complete state. Many parts of the language are still poorly 
defined and even more poorly implemented. The standard library is 
still lacking in critical areas and there are still thousands of 
non-trivial bugs in the database. The language itself is still 
evolving rapidly. Speaking optimistically, I think we are still a 
few years away from resolving the existing language issues, based 
on the current pace of things.

We're heading in the right direction now and even accelerating, 
but I think it would be incredibly unwise to embark on a new 
side-project, which would just consume dev time, pulling effort 
away from D2 development. D1 was discontinued to spend more time 
on D2, not to start new projects of debatable benefit.

Please let's finish this language before we start on another.