Send me your list of D gripes and wishes

[Paul Backus]

On Monday, 26 December 2022 at 01:29:40 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:
> On 12/25/2022 4:16 PM, Paul Backus wrote:
>> Do you dispute this? In your view, is it the case that 
>> contributing to D is, at this very moment, as smooth and 
>> frictionless a process as it could ever possibly be, without 
>> compromising on quality?
>
> I don't know how to have quality with a frictionless process. 
> It's like that old maxim:
>
> 1. quality
> 2. cost
> 3. time
>
> Pick two.

I agree that the friction cannot be reduced to zero. I still 
think it is probably possible to reduce it to, say, 50% of its 
current amount, without compromising on quality.

In the same way that software can have both essential complexity 
and accidental complexity [1], a process can have both essential 
friction and accidental friction. What I and others are 
suggesting is that a lot of the friction in D's current 
contribution process is accidental, not essential, and could be 
removed without making the process less effective.

For example: Jonathan Marler says he spent "more time arguing 
with people than writing code." How much of that argument do you 
think was productive, and how much was unproductive? Github 
provides no shortage of moderation tools [2]; I am sure that if 
we put our minds to it, we can work out some policies for using 
those tools to weed out unproductive arguments and keep PR and 
issue discussions focused.

[1] http://worrydream.com/refs/Brooks-NoSilverBullet.pdf
[2] 
https://docs.github.com/en/communities/moderating-comments-and-conversations