What are the worst parts of D?

[Joakim via Digitalmars-d]

On Thursday, 25 September 2014 at 03:55:22 UTC, Walter Bright
wrote:
> I make similar statements all the time. It doesn't result in 
> action on anyone's part. I don't tell people what to do - they 
> work on aspects of D that interest them.
>
> Even people who ask me what to work on never follow my 
> suggestions. They work on whatever floats their boat. It's my 
> biggest challenge working on free software :-)

One recurring theme appears to be people waiting on you to decide
on whether an idea is agreeable in principle before implementing
it.  It would help if you put up a list on the wiki of such
features, either that you want or that you agree with others
would be good to have, ie some sort of feature wish list that's
pre-approved by you and Andrei.

D enthusiasts shouldn't have to wade through a bunch of forum
postings and reddit comments to find out that C++ and gc are the
current priorities.  When this was pointed out to Andrei, he
asked that someone else put it on the wiki, and I see that
someone just added it to the agenda for 2.067.

I'm sorry but it's ridiculous for you two co-BDFLs not to put
these new priorities or pre-approved features (perhaps even a
list of features you'd automatically reject) in a list on the
wiki and maintain it yourselves.  It's the least you can do
considering the veto power you have.

Of course, such lists don't imply a hierarchy where you tell
everyone what to do, as the D community is always free to ignore
your agenda. ;) But it would enable clear and concise
communication, which is lacking now, and I suspect many would
take your approval as a signal for what to work on next.

For a concrete example, some in this thread have mentioned
cleaning up the language, presumably enabled by a dfix tool so
users can have their source automatically updated.  But even
Jacob seemed to think you two were against dfix, in the quote
below:

On Wednesday, 24 September 2014 at 06:16:07 UTC, Jacob Carlborg
wrote:
> On 23/09/14 20:32, David Nadlinger wrote:
>
>> Seriously, once somebody comes up with an automatic fixup 
>> tool, there is
>> hardly any generic argument left against language changes.
>
> Brain has already said that such a tool is fairly easy to 
> create in many cases. Also that he is willing do to so if it 
> will be used. But so far neither Andrei or Walter have shown 
> any signs of willing to break code that can be fixed with a 
> tool like this. I can understand that Brian doesn't want to 
> create such a tool if it's not going to be used.

Andrei has voiced some support for a tool like this, though in
exactly what context is unclear.  I believe you once said it'd be
unworkable, then when Brian showed you an example using
libdparse, you took that back but did not say you wanted to start
cleaning up D using such a dfix tool.  Go has been doing this for
years using gofix and many of us have expressed a desire for such
language cleanup using automated source conversion:

http://blog.golang.org/introducing-gofix

I can understand why nobody builds a dfix tool if it's not going
to be used officially to clean up the language.  If you said
you'd go for it, I imagine Brian would build such a tool and find
stuff to fix.

Of course, sometimes people look to you two too much to decide.
I don't see why Vladimir can't build the autotester setup he
wants for third-party D projects and continuously run any
third-party projects he wants (all of code.dlang.org?) against
dmd/druntime/phobos from git for himself.  If others like it,
they will start using it for their own projects.  The only reason
to integrate it with the dmd autotester is to notify authors of
their pull requests that broke third-party code, but that can
wait till such a third-party autotester has been proven for the
third-party authors first.

To sum up, you can't tell people what to do in the D community,
but you can provide more clear direction on what the priorities
are and which future paths have the green light, especially since
you and Andrei are the gatekeepers for what gets into dmd.