On Thursday, 8 February 2018 at 11:06:15 UTC, ixid wrote:
How difficult would it be for D at this point to move towards a
pay for what you use system that out of the box is betterC and
requires the garbage collector to be explicitly imported?
https://github.com/dlang/druntime/pull/2057
It feels like D has not overcome at least two major issues in
the public mind, the built-in GC and, more ludicrously, the D1
library split. Would there not be significant value in making
this a D3 transition? As non-breaking as possible but moving
the run time elements into libraries
One of Andrei's student is working on this.
I think she has been focusing on templated ==, <= and AAs so far
and is now recently getting more into the GC business:
https://github.com/dlang/druntime/pulls?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q=is%3Apr+author%3Asomzzz
and potentially taking the opportunity to invert the defaults
for things like safe and pure.
I think someone (Petar?) is working on a DIP for package-wide
defaults.
The idea is simple, you tell the compiler once:
"Hey yo, listen up. I know that old code still needs to XXX (e.g.
@system by default), but don't be a bad boy and let me opt-in
into the cool new stuff by default, please"
I don't recall the exact details though.
Ideally it's like the -std=c++11 flag, i.e. you set it once in
your dub.sdl and don't have to think about it again.
The story of this D3 transition to the public would then
address the 'issues' head on, creating an easily conveyable
story that these have been resolved. This appears to be the
level on which a lot of language adoption works, at least
between hearing about and trying a language. At the moment it's
painful to see the endless criticisms of the GC and library
split crop up whenever D is discussed. D is progressing
technically but needs a 'story'.
I don't think D3 is going to happen anytime soon (except someone
forks the language).
Breaking changes are only done for critical things, e.g. when the
compiler learns to detect new errors in your code.
Regarding the 'story', there's e.g. the excellent GC Series now
(https://dlang.org/blog/the-gc-series) and things are moving
forward though of course PR has always been one of D's weakest
points.
---
Though if there's ever a D3, my list of things to be addressed is
big
- no auto-decoding
- fix shared
- attribute bloat
- wrong defaults (e.g. @safe or final by default)
- C behavior without compiler warnings
- tuples (though it looks like they can be retro-actively added
now that the use of the return of the comma operator is finally
gone)
- Redesign Phobos with @nogc in mind
- remove the bloat from Phobos
- std.io (with streams)
- proper naming and structuring in Phobos (e.g. why is
doesPointTo or RangePrimitive in std.exception), or "hello
super-messy std.traits"
...
Some of these actually can be fixed with little or no breakage,
but for most - if addressed - hell would break loose.
