The Problem With DIPs

[Walter Bright via Digitalmars-d]

On 6/9/2016 6:54 AM, Kagamin wrote:
> On Wednesday, 8 June 2016 at 19:59:27 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:
>> A DIP not being dealt with does not mean it is a bad idea. It pretty much
>> means we just aren't ready to deal with it at the moment. It's time may not
>> have come yet. But it's not going away, it'll still be there when needed. I've
>> found mining DIPs to be quite useful in designing the 'return ref' feature.
>> DIPs are a gold mine of ideas that be built upon, and I know where to find them.
>
> So DIPs are more like idea pool and what wasn't outright rejected so far can
> still be of some interest?

Of course.

For example, there have been many ref counting proposals for D (not remotely all 
of them are DIPs). They've all had problems of one sort or another, but by 
reviewing existing work one has a hope of coming up with a better proposal than 
repeating a flawed one. Or one can take the "best of" the various proposals to 
produce a better one. It becomes part of the collective knowledge around D.