There is no backport/bug fix for the stable releases like gcc
or other well know software, gcc has at least the latest 3
stable version maintained, when a bug is found it's fixed on
all of the maintained versions that suffer from it.
Yes, I agree. I've also complained about not having a stable
version in the past. The attitude in the D community is that
having one stable and one experimental branch is not desirable.
And for some reason it is claimed that D is production ready. I
don't agree, and I think exposing that view leads to problems.
It means that features that should have stayed experimental go
into the mainline and remain there, and that more half-way
features are being added rather than worked on theoretically
until a general and more clean solution is found.
I believe you will be happier if you view D as being in an
experimental state. And I think it is a valuable experiment too.
Especially the static reflection capabilities in a C++ like
language is interesting to think about. That is what makes D most
interesting to me at the moment.
It's so sad to see interesting projects using the D language
abandoned tired of code breakage with any dmd compiler
evolution.
The D designers have expressed an interest in gofix which upgrade
source from an old version to a newer version.
Requirements for this to be fully automatic:
- Add a version identifier in the head of each source file,
currently not possible?
- Remove string mixins!!
- Careful addition of new features.
Now let's see std.str I expect some functions that are widely
available on other languages to be present there but some of
then are std.algorithm, std.array, std.container, std.format
and even on std.str it's crazy for a new developer to find
things on phobos.
Yes, I agree. Phobos is a mix of useful, esoteric and
experimental features. It should be broken down in a different
way.
I have recently started to map out the standard features of
Haskell and looking at how to represent them in D. The API and
structure of phobos need some work. I think the overrated C++
standard library has influenced phobos too much.
I also want to see string mixins removed from phobos. It is a
very ugly feature. I think phobos should move 100% to lambdas and
work on the optimization of lambdas if it is a problem.
Well I'll update time to time this post and encourage others to
do the same hopping that this will drive positive changes to
the D language.
I like your attitude, but keep in mind that C++ has many more
people behind it. I've changed my view to look at D as being in
an experimental state. I think the desire to expand features go
beyond the capacity of the project both in the compiler and
libraries.
And since the compiler is written in C++, it is difficult to make
big changes. Compilers written in functional languages such as
Haskell or OCaml are more open to experimentation.
