[OT] Scala Resurrection

[Siarhei Siamashka]

On Thursday, 26 January 2023 at 03:09:47 UTC, ryuukk_ wrote:
> On Wednesday, 25 January 2023 at 23:45:58 UTC, bachmeier wrote:
>> There is a ton of work that can be done. Everyone instantly 
>> jumps to language changes, which frankly are irrelevant in 
>> terms of D seeing wider adoption. The language is already good 
>> enough. Maybe not for every use case, but definitely good 
>> enough to see much heavier usage.
>
> There are some language features that should not be neglected, 
> the ones that are considered obvious to have in most modern 
> languages, to name just one: Tagged Union with Pattern matching
>
> Having to still advocate for it in and still seeing this much 
> resistance in 2023 is kinda sad, to be honest

I'm not sure what kind of resistance you are talking about, but 
it would be useful to have some reassurance that the existing 
language features (which are already "good enough" as stated by 
bachmeier) won't be broken.

There are some useful language features that are missing. For 
example, I want to be able to return multiple values from a 
function and assign them to multiple variables, which is a 
feature that is implemented by pretty much every other 
programming language (even C++17 in the form of "structured 
binding"). But if somebody says that we can have it in D only in 
a way that breaks the existing software, then this won't make me 
happy and you will see some "resistance".

Today D2 is useful for developing software. But it's like 
building a house on a sleeping volcano. Even if everything is 
relatively calm right now, nobody knows when it is going to erupt 
and cause massive damage to the existing ecosystem. Also here's a 
quote from the linked Scala post:

     "As part of this transformation, Scala 3 needs to commit to 
backward
     compatibility, like Java, Go, and all other commercial 
programming
     languages. There can never again be a “Scala 3”-style 
boil-the-ocean,
     greenfield language rewrite. It’s time for the language to 
stabilize,
     and for the focus to shift to commercial interests, including 
bug fixes,
     improved performance, enhanced tool support, and optimizing."