On Borrow Checking

[Dukc]

On Saturday, 10 May 2025 at 03:52:34 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:
> On 5/4/2025 11:52 PM, Dukc wrote:
>> You have to admit this makes our checker, as it currently 
>> stands, unusable for what many of us consider the primary 
>> purpose of a borrow checker.
>
> The borrow checker works on functions marked with @live. Just 
> like safe checks are only on functions marked @safe. Both are 
> usable.

No aknowledgement of the langauge shortcoming multiple people 
have to pointed out again and again. You're still talking as it 
wasn't there.

I have hard time believing a successful programming language 
designer wouldn't just get it. Instead, I'm assuming you have a 
marketing philosophy that tells you to avoid admitting things 
like this because it'd be more important to show faith in the 
language and inspire confidence in it.

Maybe this sort of thinking has it's place when we're at 
news.ycombinator.com and the topic is about merits of the 
language in general. But this is largely a design discussion, and 
the participants are largely those who are already committed to 
the language. Discussions like this can't move forward without 
common understanding of the problem.

It is true that there could still be someone who searches for "D 
borrow checker" or something, lands on this discussion and goes 
for Rust instead when there's a confirmation our borrow checker 
doesn't do the same things. But hiding problems here runs into 
what I see as a far greater risk: The debators, who want to 
improve the language, or see it improving, will get frustated if 
they don't see the leadership treating their input seriously, 
which will lead to loss of morale and contributors if it goes too 
far. So please don't treat these issues with a "fake it till you 
make it" - attitude.