What are the worst parts of D?

[H. S. Teoh via Digitalmars-d]

On Thu, Sep 25, 2014 at 03:48:11PM -0700, Andrei Alexandrescu via Digitalmars-d wrote:
> On 9/25/14, 2:03 PM, eles wrote:
> >On Tuesday, 23 September 2014 at 14:29:06 UTC, Sean Kelly wrote:
> >
> >>lack of attention paid to tightening up what we've already got and
> >>deprecating old stuff that no one wants any more.  And inconsistency
> >>in how things work in the language.
> >
> >The feeling that I have is that if D2 does not get a serious cleanup
> >at this stage, then D3 must follow quickly (and such move will be
> >unstoppable), otherwise people will fall back to D1 or C++next.
> 
> I'm not sharing that feeling at all. From that perspective all
> languages are in need of a "serious cleanup". -- Andrei

I've been thinking that it might do us some good if we aren't as
paranoid about breaking old code, as long as (1) it's to fix a language
design flaw, (2) it exposes potentially (or outright) buggy user code,
(3) users are warned well ahead of time, followed by a full deprecation
cycle, and (4) optionally, there's a tool, either fully or partially
automated, that can upgrade old codebases.

I mean, enterprises use deprecation cycles with their products all the
time, and we don't hear of customers quitting just because of that. Some
of the more vocal customers will voice their unhappiness, but as long as
you're willing to work with them and allow them sufficient time to
migrate over nicely and phase out the old stuff, they're generally
accepting of the process.

We've already had offers from D-based organizations asking to please
break their code(!) for the sake of fixing language design flaws -- this
is already far more than what most enterprise customers are generally
willing to put up with, IME. Yet we're doing far less than what
enterprises do in order to keep their product up-to-date. We may need to
use very long deprecation cycles to keep everyone happy (on the order of
2-3 years perhaps), but doing nothing will only result in absolutely
zero improvement even after 10 years.


T

-- 
Кто везде - тот нигде.