The ensloppification of D is a grave mistake

[Lance Bachmeier]

On Wednesday, 8 July 2026 at 08:39:55 UTC, Alexandru Ermicioi 
wrote:
> On Monday, 6 July 2026 at 18:18:29 UTC, Lance Bachmeier wrote:
>> This is an excellent argument in favor of AI. I've attempted 
>> to run code from others that had more than a hundred 
>> dependencies that had to be installed. In some cases, it was 
>> hundreds of dependencies. I recently ran someone's Python code 
>> and had to create an environment with over 700 MB of 
>> dependencies. Most of the time, it's "I need this one small 
>> function, and I know it's in this library over here", so they 
>> add it as a dependency. That one library might have 25 
>> dependencies of its own. If AI can rid us of this mess, the 
>> more AI the better.
>
> This someone has a bad balance of cost vs benefits ratio if he 
> imports a behemoth just for it's toe.
>
> Such things if possible should be rejected as soon as its seen.

The context is an academic journal that requires authors to 
provide the code and data they used to get their results, so that 
all the details are out in public. I've been able to tell authors 
to remove unnecessary dependencies more often than you'd expect 
(including calls to expensive Matlab toolboxes that duplicated 
things done in base Matlab). I don't have the option to tell them 
to change working code. Authors have an incentive to get it done 
ASAP and they don't care if there are a few dozen dependencies 
that could have been avoided. I'm afraid LLMs are more prone 
rather than less to pull in dependencies.