• cletuspaul (5/5) Feb 08 2006 D seems sufficiently mature that a Release 1.0 should be finalized now, ...
• Jarrett Billingsley (16/25) Feb 08 2006 I'm not sure where I stand on this. On one side, I think that releasing...

cletuspaul <cletuspaul_member pathlink.com> writes:

D seems sufficiently mature that a Release 1.0 should be finalized now, rather
than waiting to iron out all of the little kinks.

Many other languages started life as rough and messy hatchlings, only to mature
later.  Pascal did not get wings until Borlad invested time and resources on it.
So it is time for a Release 1.0 -- later on we can remove the warts and pimples.

"Jarrett Billingsley" <kb3ctd2 yahoo.com> writes:

"cletuspaul" <cletuspaul_member pathlink.com> wrote in message 
news:dsec56$2uau$1 digitaldaemon.com...
D seems sufficiently mature that a Release 1.0 should be finalized now, 
rather
 than waiting to iron out all of the little kinks.

 Many other languages started life as rough and messy hatchlings, only to 
 mature
 later.  Pascal did not get wings until Borlad invested time and resources 
 on it.
 So it is time for a Release 1.0 -- later on we can remove the warts and 
 pimples.

I'm not sure where I stand on this.  On one side, I think that releasing a 
1.0 would get more people interested - some people see "alpha" and think 
"oh, that's nice" and move on.  If 1.0 is released, more people will see it 
as a viable language, and not so much a proof-of-concept.

On the other hand, I think that releasing an unfinished product (and D sure 
is unfinished) might negatively affect a lot of things - peoples' opinion of 
it being one of the biggest, but other, more long-term things as well.  For 
example: since the spec is still malleable, there may be things that get 
"stuck" in 1.0 which, by the very nature of releasing an official version, 
can never be changed.  Once D becomes 1.0, none of the current spec may 
change.  New features can be added, but what's there is there, and if it 
turns out to be a mistake, it can't be fixed.  I think the language needs to 
at least get to the point where the spec is 99.99% guaranteed to be alright 
before it goes 1.0.