Being Positive

[John Gabriele]

On Tuesday, 13 February 2018 at 03:40:52 UTC, Jonathan M Davis 
wrote:
> {snip} I suspect that part of it is that a lot of folks seem to 
> come to D looking for the perfect language after having be 
> frustrated by another language like C++, and while D is a lot 
> closer to that for many folks than other languages are, it 
> still has plenty of flaws, and we want those flaws fixed so 
> that it can become the perfect language. Obviously, that's not 
> going to happen. No language is perfect, but the vocal portion 
> of the D community does have a tendency to want to push for 
> everything that's arguably wrong with D to be fixed, and that 
> can result in a lot of negativity, but it can also result in 
> things getting fixed (though that requires actually doing 
> something about it rather than just complaining).

I think what would help here is a D wiki page (maybe 
<https://wiki.dlang.org/Language_issues> could be expanded) that 
lists perceived flaws in the language, together with an 
explanation whether or not it's really considered a flaw, and if 
it is, why it's not being fixed. Those not-being-fixed reasons 
are the real crux of the issue, I think:

   * If the reason is lack of manpower or expertise in the area, 
then complaints about the flaw can be responded with, "see [that 
wiki page], can you pitch in?".

   * If the reason is that by fixing the issue it would cause 
problems {x}, {y}, and {z}, then the person raising the complaint 
learns something about language design.

   * If the reason is the language design team's personal 
preference on the matter, and the tradeoffs are listed, then 
users learn what the tradeoffs are and have to live with it.

   * If the reason for not fixing the issue is hesitation to break 
backward compatibility, then this may be an issue that D 
leadership wants to hear feedback on.

But I think pointing people to that wiki page and laying it out 
like that may diffuse a lot of arguments.