On Thursday, 11 February 2016 at 06:20:33 UTC, Joakim wrote:
On Thursday, 11 February 2016 at 05:31:54 UTC, tsbockman wrote:
As of today, the "Study" group for safe reference-counting
doesn't appear to be going much of anywhere, because Walter
and Andrei have rejected the DIP69 approach without having a
real alternative in hand. (DIP77 seems better than nothing to
me, but has not been well-received by those in the community
who are most invested in, and most knowledgeable of, memory
management issues.)
I'll note that not knowing a better solution doesn't mean one
must simply accept the solution at hand, especially if that
temporary solution will be difficult to unwind later.
Sometimes you simply need more time to come up with something
better. It all depends on the scale of the project and the
suitability of the solution presented; you cannot simply say
that "some" solution is better than nothing, as the original
quoted post does.
But yeah, maybe the reasons for rejection can be communicated
better.
Although I realize it might sound like I am, I'm not really
criticizing either side in this.
I don't really know whether either DIP69 or DIP77 actually
represents a reasonable solution to the problem; as I said, I am
unqualified to make that determination. I was simply giving my
impression of where the discussion stands at the moment.
I am certainly not advocating that DIP77 be implemented over the
objections of so many of the people in the community who *are*
qualified.
In the spirit of the original post, perhaps what is needed is
simply for someone to fork DMD and implement DIP69, so that
people can actually try it instead of just imagining it.
That's a lot of time and effort to invest though, knowing that
your work will most likely be rejected for purely subjective
reasons.
This is why you should generally only work on something you
actually need, which is a great discipline. Even if it's
rejected, you can code it up and use it yourself, though that's
not always possible with certain language changes and DIPs.
Definitely.
For example, I asked about ARM and mobile support for D [...]
Your efforts are appreciated! I don't know if anyone else is
using your work *yet*, but give it time and I'm confident that
they will. ARM and Android are very important platforms.
