On Wednesday, 24 September 2014 at 14:56:11 UTC, Don wrote:
I agree completely. I would say that the #1 problem in D is the
paranoid fear of breaking backwards compatibility. I said that
in my 2013 talk. It is still true today.
Sociomantic says, PLEASE BREAK OUR CODE! Get rid of the old
design bugs while we still can.
For example: We agreed *years* ago to remove the NCEG
operators. Why haven't they been removed yet?
As I said earlier in the year, one of the biggest ever breaking
changes was the fix for array stomping, but it wasn't even
recognized as a breaking change!
Breaking changes happen all the time, and the ones that break
noisily are really not a problem.
"Most D code is yet to be written."
What change in particular?
I've got a nasty feeling that you misread what he wrote. Every
time we say, "breaking changes are good", you seem to hear
"breaking changes are bad"!
The existing D corporate users are still sympathetic to
breaking changes. We are giving the language an extraordinary
opportunity. And it's incredibly frustrating to watch that
opportunity being wasted due to paranoia.
We are holding the door open. But we can't hold it open
forever, the more corporate users we get, the harder it becomes.
Break our code TODAY.
"Most D code is yet to be written."
As the CTO of a company having the main selling products "powered
by D", I totally agree with Don: break our code TODAY.
We are aiding ALS impaired people to have a better life with D
products, so I can tell that we definitely care about SW
quality...
But a planned breaking change, that improves the language
overall, will always be welcomed here in SR Labs.
---
/Paolo
