Frist Draft (in this forum): Enum Parameters

[Paul Backus]

On Thursday, 16 May 2024 at 13:59:35 UTC, Quirin Schroll wrote:
> Well, there’s always going to be legacy code that doesn’t 
> interact well with the latest features. It’s unfortunate, but 
> true for every new feature that extends APIs.
> What are we gonna do? Never ever extend APIs?

What we do is, we weigh the costs and benefits of each proposed 
change, and decide accordingly. I agree that there are cases 
where introducing incompatibilities with "legacy code" is 
justified; I just don't think this is one of them.

> I cannot help but find this argument quite weak. It only 
> concerns library authors. If you write production code and find 
> that a function needs to change and forward `ref`, you can just 
> change it to do so. Same with `enum`. It’s the same with 
> attributes.

Given how often people complain that D needs more libraries, I 
think it's in our best interest to make library authors' lives 
easier, not harder.