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digitalmars.D - A few questions

reply Chris <wendlec tcd.ie> writes:
I have a few questions I hope somebody from the D Language 
Foundation can answer. Here they are:

1. The website dlang.org states the following 
(https://dlang.org/foundation/about.html)

The officers of the D Language Foundation are:
     • Walter Bright, President
     • Tudor Andrei Cristian Alexandrescu, Vice President and 
Treasurer
     • Ali Çehreli, Secretary

Is this information still accurate? Wasn’t Attila Neves to hold 
one of the positions above?

2. Is there an overview or an annual financial report where 
donators and contributors can see what the money is used for?

3. Has the page https://dlang.org/orgs-using-d.html been updated, 
i.e. are there any newcomers or are there any companies that are 
still listed but have actually stopped using D?

4. Are there plans for D3, i.e. a version of D that will get rid 
of old baggage and keep the great features, and will also come 
with state of the art tooling?

Thank you very much!
Jun 11 2020
next sibling parent reply aberba <karabutaworld gmail.com> writes:
On Thursday, 11 June 2020 at 14:04:47 UTC, Chris wrote:

 I have a few questions I hope somebody from the D Language 
 Foundation can answer. Here they are:

 1. The website dlang.org states the following 
 (https://dlang.org/foundation/about.html)

 The officers of the D Language Foundation are:
     • Walter Bright, President
     • Tudor Andrei Cristian Alexandrescu, Vice President and 
 Treasurer
     • Ali Çehreli, Secretary

 Is this information still accurate? Wasn’t Attila Neves to hold 
 one of the positions above?


Its possibly an oversight. I'm not sure if anyone is in-charge 
though. I know Seb to be one of the Web guys.



 2. Is there an overview or an annual financial report where 
 donators and contributors can see what the money is used for?


Interesting question


 3. Has the page https://dlang.org/orgs-using-d.html been 
 updated, i.e. are there any newcomers or are there any 
 companies that are still listed but have actually stopped using 
 D?


Ditto


 4. Are there plans for D3, i.e. a version of D that will get 
 rid of old baggage and keep the great features, and will also 
 come with state of the art tooling?


I don't think so, Walter recently said something about it...that 
he would like to see someone step up and do the work. Personally 
I'll say we're barely through what's possible with D2. Still 
waiting for the Killer App™

D2 was supposed to be the perfect D, not sure D3 will be much 
different. Although I agree we've learnt some lessons from D2, I 
feel we've barely scratched the surface of D2


 Lawrence Aberba
 (Cus everyone else does it)
Jun 11 2020
parent reply Bastiaan Veelo <Bastiaan Veelo.net> writes:
On Thursday, 11 June 2020 at 17:55:59 UTC, aberba wrote:

 On Thursday, 11 June 2020 at 14:04:47 UTC, Chris wrote:

 I have a few questions I hope somebody from the D Language 
 Foundation can answer.




To the OP: perhaps questions to the foundation are best addressed 
at the e-mail address listed on the page that you quoted.


 Here they are:

 1. The website dlang.org states the following 
 (https://dlang.org/foundation/about.html)

 The officers of the D Language Foundation are:
     • Walter Bright, President
     • Tudor Andrei Cristian Alexandrescu, Vice President and 
 Treasurer
     • Ali Çehreli, Secretary

 Is this information still accurate? Wasn’t Attila Neves to 
 hold one of the positions above?


 Its possibly an oversight. I'm not sure if anyone is in-charge 
 though. I know Seb to be one of the Web guys.


It is not an oversight. He passed on a number of responsibilities 
but still serves the Foundation. 
https://youtu.be/cpTAtiboIDs?t=3049


 2. Is there an overview or an annual financial report where 
 donators and contributors can see what the money is used for?


 Interesting question


Being a 501(c) organization their accounting is subject to 
external audits. There is no public financial report that I know 
of, but then again donations are typically done to a specific 
purpose.


 3. Has the page https://dlang.org/orgs-using-d.html been 
 updated, i.e. are there any newcomers or are there any 
 companies that are still listed but have actually stopped 
 using D?


 Ditto


It is maintained: 
https://github.com/dlang/dlang.org/commits/master/orgs-using-d.dd

-- Bastiaan.
Jun 11 2020
parent Adam D. Ruppe <destructionator gmail.com> writes:
On Thursday, 11 June 2020 at 21:33:22 UTC, Bastiaan Veelo wrote:

 Being a 501(c) organization their accounting is subject to 
 external audits. There is no public financial report that I 
 know of, but then again donations are typically done to a 
 specific purpose.


the summary page of the tax return should be available upon 
request, the form 990
Jun 11 2020
prev sibling next sibling parent mw <mingwu gmail.com> writes:
On Thursday, 11 June 2020 at 14:04:47 UTC, Chris wrote:

 3. Has the page https://dlang.org/orgs-using-d.html been 
 updated, i.e. are there any newcomers or are there any 
 companies that are still listed but have actually stopped using 
 D?


Many of the project has github link, if you click thru, e.g.:

https://github.com/eBay/tsv-utils
https://github.com/netflix/vectorflow
https://github.com/AuburnSounds/dplug

You will see they are under active dev, and with recent commits 
days, even hours ago.

This is a pleasant surprise to me too :-)

Maybe https://dlang.org/orgs-using-d.html should also pull that 
information from github to show the latest update of each project.
Jun 11 2020
prev sibling parent reply Chris <wendlec tcd.ie> writes:
On Thursday, 11 June 2020 at 14:04:47 UTC, Chris wrote:

 I have a few questions I hope somebody from the D Language 
 Foundation can answer. Here they are:

 1. The website dlang.org states the following 
 (https://dlang.org/foundation/about.html)

 The officers of the D Language Foundation are:
     • Walter Bright, President
     • Tudor Andrei Cristian Alexandrescu, Vice President and 
 Treasurer
     • Ali Çehreli, Secretary

 Is this information still accurate? Wasn’t Attila Neves to hold 
 one of the positions above?

 2. Is there an overview or an annual financial report where 
 donators and contributors can see what the money is used for?

 3. Has the page https://dlang.org/orgs-using-d.html been 
 updated, i.e. are there any newcomers or are there any 
 companies that are still listed but have actually stopped using 
 D?

 4. Are there plans for D3, i.e. a version of D that will get 
 rid of old baggage and keep the great features, and will also 
 come with state of the art tooling?

 Thank you very much!


No answer from the D Language Foundation? Walter, Andrei, Ali, 
Atila (?), Mike Parker (?)?
Jun 19 2020
parent reply Andrei Alexandrescu <SeeWebsiteForEmail erdani.com> writes:
On 6/19/20 9:44 AM, Chris wrote:

 On Thursday, 11 June 2020 at 14:04:47 UTC, Chris wrote:

 I have a few questions I hope somebody from the D Language Foundation 
 can answer. Here they are:

 1. The website dlang.org states the following 
 (https://dlang.org/foundation/about.html)

 The officers of the D Language Foundation are:
     • Walter Bright, President
     • Tudor Andrei Cristian Alexandrescu, Vice President and Treasurer
     • Ali Çehreli, Secretary

 Is this information still accurate? Wasn’t Attila Neves to hold one of 
 the positions above?

 2. Is there an overview or an annual financial report where donators 
 and contributors can see what the money is used for?

 3. Has the page https://dlang.org/orgs-using-d.html been updated, i.e. 
 are there any newcomers or are there any companies that are still 
 listed but have actually stopped using D?

 4. Are there plans for D3, i.e. a version of D that will get rid of 
 old baggage and keep the great features, and will also come with state 
 of the art tooling?

 Thank you very much!


 
 No answer from the D Language Foundation? Walter, Andrei, Ali, Atila 
 (?), Mike Parker (?)?


Thanks for asking. These are reasonable questions to ask; however, your 
posting history has caused us concern that this is a provocation. Once 
we reply in any way, the answer can be used to pick a fight (I don't 
agree with this policy, I demand more information on that etc), all 
framed as an exchange that we must engage in lest we have shady things 
to hide. We don't. Also we can't commit to hanging out on the forums and 
satisfactorily engage with anyone with an Internet connection and a zest 
for stirring stuff up.

That said, even a provocation may embed good ideas. Some of our 
documentation is publicly accessible by law. Of course more details are 
better for our existing and prospective donors. We have long looked into 
providing detailed reports on the use of financing (we also did some in 
the past vision documents), the main difficulty being finding the time 
to compile the information. Mike is working on that. The answers to 1, 
2, and 4 are as expected - no change, updated as per our knowledge, and no.
Jun 19 2020
parent reply Chris <wendlec tcd.ie> writes:
On Friday, 19 June 2020 at 14:41:58 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote
On Friday, 19 June 2020 at 14:41:58 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu 
wrote:

 
 No answer from the D Language Foundation? Walter, Andrei, Ali, 
 Atila (?), Mike Parker (?)?


 Thanks for asking. These are reasonable questions to ask; 
 however, your posting history has caused us concern that this 
 is a provocation. Once we reply in any way, the answer can be 
 used to pick a fight (I don't agree with this policy, I demand 
 more information on that etc), all framed as an exchange that 
 we must engage in lest we have shady things to hide. We don't. 
 Also we can't commit to hanging out on the forums and 
 satisfactorily engage with anyone with an Internet connection 
 and a zest for stirring stuff up.


First of all, thanks for your answer.

Allow me to say something regarding my "posting history". It 
certainly didn't help that members of the D Language Foundation 
were stonewalling, answering in an evasive manner or even 
twisting my words. So it shouldn't come as a surprise when you 
get reactions that appear disgruntled, I'm not the only 
(ex-)member this has happened to (some left D altogether, 
understandably so). And if you go back a bit further in my 
"posting history" you will see that I was quite happy with D (for 
years). It wasn't until I noticed that things were going 
seriously awry (instead of getting better, as one would have 
expected after the advent of the D Foundation), and that I feared 
for the future of my software written in D that I started to 
address certain issues that deeply worried me (e.g. code 
breakage, mobile platforms, autodecoding / string handling). I 
had "skin in the game" but was met with indifference as my 
concerns were not "valid" or important concerns as far as the 
leadership was concerned.

It doesn't help to just ignore / stonewall a user, if you don't 
like the questions / issues raised or think they're unimportant. 
This will only make things worse and lead to the suspicion that 
there are "shady things" going on, and think of the impression 
others might get, people from the outside who are interested in D.

I also object to the expression "framed as an exchange" which 
implies dishonesty and trolling. A few simple and _honest_ 
answers are enough. Being evasive in your answers is not. How am 
I supposed to know if I should "watch this space" or not.


 That said, even a provocation may embed good ideas. Some of our 
 documentation is publicly accessible by law. Of course more 
 details are better for our existing and prospective donors. We 
 have long looked into providing detailed reports on the use of 
 financing (we also did some in the past vision documents), the 
 main difficulty being finding the time to compile the 
 information. Mike is working on that. The answers to 1, 2, and 
 4 are as expected - no change, updated as per our knowledge, 
 and no.


Now there's an answer at last! And no, my questions weren't 
supposed to be "provocations". I'm certainly not the only one 
who'd like to have a general picture of how the money is spent, 
so more transparency is definitely a good idea. And who knows, 
maybe people in the community / investors can come up with ideas 
how to make better use of the resources available, especially now 
that DConf didn't happen, there must be additional resources that 
can be used for tooling, cross-platform development or even D3.

As for D3, a pity there are no plans for it, it galls me that D 
should remain in its current state as it undoubtedly has good 
features.
Jun 23 2020
parent reply JN <666total wp.pl> writes:
On Tuesday, 23 June 2020 at 16:57:04 UTC, Chris wrote:

 As for D3, a pity there are no plans for it, it galls me that D 
 should remain in its current state as it undoubtedly has good 
 features.


What would your D3 contain? The problem is that many people have 
different vision for the "better D" and they are often 
incompatible. Some people for example would like to make  safe 
the default, some people would like to drop OOP, some people 
would like to drop the GC, many different ideas going on around.
Jun 25 2020
next sibling parent reply aberba <karabutaworld gmail.com> writes:
On Thursday, 25 June 2020 at 13:18:22 UTC, JN wrote:

 On Tuesday, 23 June 2020 at 16:57:04 UTC, Chris wrote:

 As for D3, a pity there are no plans for it, it galls me that 
 D should remain in its current state as it undoubtedly has 
 good features.


 What would your D3 contain? The problem is that many people 
 have different vision for the "better D" and they are often 
 incompatible. Some people for example would like to make  safe 
 the default, some people would like to drop OOP, some people 
 would like to drop the GC, many different ideas going on around.


And some like D2 but cleaned out.
Jun 25 2020
parent reply Yatheendra <indra yath.io> writes:
On Thursday, 25 June 2020 at 15:52:01 UTC, aberba wrote:

 And some like D2 but cleaned out.


+1

If there is consensus on, for example, auto-decode as default 
needing to go, a branch could be blessed that does so and works 
out a way to stay in sync with the mainline. Just promote that so 
that new projects pick it up (existing ones would know to stick 
to mainline).

Anything on which there is consensus, do it without impacting 
existing code investments.
Jun 26 2020
parent reply Andrei Alexandrescu <SeeWebsiteForEmail erdani.com> writes:
On 6/26/20 10:30 PM, Yatheendra wrote:

 On Thursday, 25 June 2020 at 15:52:01 UTC, aberba wrote:

 And some like D2 but cleaned out.


 
 +1
 
 If there is consensus on, for example, auto-decode as default needing to 
 go, a branch could be blessed that does so and works out a way to stay 
 in sync with the mainline. Just promote that so that new projects pick 
 it up (existing ones would know to stick to mainline).
 
 Anything on which there is consensus, do it without impacting existing 
 code investments.


I think the first order of business would be to have a nothrow core that 
defines correcntess of inputs as preconditions. The rest of the library 
can use it underneath. For example maxElement would have a precondition 
that the range is not empty etc.

That also means finding new ways for APIs. std.conv.to would need a 
lambda to call if conversion fails, thus pushing policy to the caller.
Jun 29 2020
next sibling parent reply Yatheendra <indra yath.io> writes:
On Monday, 29 June 2020 at 16:56:37 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu 
wrote:

 I think the first order of business would be to have a nothrow 
 core that defines correcntess of inputs as preconditions. The 
 rest of the library can use it underneath. For example 
 maxElement would have a precondition that the range is not 
 empty etc.

 That also means finding new ways for APIs. std.conv.to would 
 need a lambda to call if conversion fails, thus pushing policy 
 to the caller.


Thanks for providing an anchor point for a clean-up effort.

Any more specifics? Like just spelling out if  nogc is a 
consideration.
Jun 29 2020
parent reply Andrei Alexandrescu <SeeWebsiteForEmail erdani.com> writes:
On 6/29/20 2:32 PM, Yatheendra wrote:

 On Monday, 29 June 2020 at 16:56:37 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:

 I think the first order of business would be to have a nothrow core 
 that defines correcntess of inputs as preconditions. The rest of the 
 library can use it underneath. For example maxElement would have a 
 precondition that the range is not empty etc.

 That also means finding new ways for APIs. std.conv.to would need a 
 lambda to call if conversion fails, thus pushing policy to the caller.


 
 Thanks for providing an anchor point for a clean-up effort.
 
 Any more specifics? Like just spelling out if  nogc is a consideration.


A nogc subset would also be nice, but more difficult to define.

Any attempt to version std or carve subsets thereof would need an early 
experiment that is relatively easy from a coding standpoint. That way 
the work can focus on the scaffolding aspects (does lookup work well? 
how do we do documentation and testing? any incompatibility issues? etc) 
without getting also mired in new bugs and other technical issues.
Jun 29 2020
parent Yatheendra <indra yath.io> writes:
On Monday, 29 June 2020 at 18:38:45 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu 
wrote:

 A nogc subset would also be nice, but more difficult to define.


Spelling that out was useful. I wasn't thinking of such subsets, 
whose definitions would need a big-picture view. Too ambitious.



 Any attempt to version std or carve subsets thereof would need 
 an early experiment that is relatively easy from a coding 
 standpoint. That way the work can focus on the scaffolding 
 aspects (does lookup work well? how do we do documentation and 
 testing? any incompatibility issues? etc) without getting also 
 mired in new bugs and other technical issues.


What would be a workable way to attempt this? Maybe Boost-like? 
An external d. package which judiciously private-imports std, 
core, etc. It might convince more contributors. I don't know 
about users; this shouldn't look like the OCaml situation (2 
external _replacements_ for its standard library), people who'd 
happily include Boost might be equally happy to import d.

Also, I know libmir is a highly-differentiated tangent, but would 
it hypothetically be what a reorganized Phobos could become? If 
not, it is useful to enumerate which aspects are undesirable in 
Phobos.
Jun 29 2020
prev sibling parent reply aliak <something something.com> writes:
On Monday, 29 June 2020 at 16:56:37 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu 
wrote:

 On 6/26/20 10:30 PM, Yatheendra wrote:

 [...]


 I think the first order of business would be to have a nothrow 
 core that defines correcntess of inputs as preconditions. The 
 rest of the library can use it underneath. For example 
 maxElement would have a precondition that the range is not 
 empty etc.

 That also means finding new ways for APIs. std.conv.to would 
 need a lambda to call if conversion fails, thus pushing policy 
 to the caller.


Or return a SumType/Either/Expected/etc?
Jun 29 2020
parent reply Andrei Alexandrescu <SeeWebsiteForEmail erdani.org> writes:
On 6/29/20 6:58 PM, aliak wrote:

 On Monday, 29 June 2020 at 16:56:37 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:

 On 6/26/20 10:30 PM, Yatheendra wrote:

 [...]


 I think the first order of business would be to have a nothrow core 
 that defines correcntess of inputs as preconditions. The rest of the 
 library can use it underneath. For example maxElement would have a 
 precondition that the range is not empty etc.

 That also means finding new ways for APIs. std.conv.to would need a 
 lambda to call if conversion fails, thus pushing policy to the caller.


 
 Or return a SumType/Either/Expected/etc?


Affirmative!
Jun 29 2020
parent Jacob Carlborg <doob me.com> writes:
On 2020-06-30 02:45, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:

 On 6/29/20 6:58 PM, aliak wrote:

 Or return a SumType/Either/Expected/etc?


 
 Affirmative!


So the first thing to do would be to come up with a unified error 
reporting mechanism that doesn't use exceptions.

I like the zero overhead exceptions C++ proposal [1]. That requires 
language support, but it would allow us to use the existing 
try-catch-finally syntax.

[1] http://www.open-std.org/jtc1/sc22/wg21/docs/papers/2018/p0709r0.pdf

-- 
/Jacob Carlborg
Jun 30 2020
prev sibling parent Chris <wendlec tcd.ie> writes:
On Thursday, 25 June 2020 at 13:18:22 UTC, JN wrote:

 On Tuesday, 23 June 2020 at 16:57:04 UTC, Chris wrote:

 As for D3, a pity there are no plans for it, it galls me that 
 D should remain in its current state as it undoubtedly has 
 good features.


 What would your D3 contain? The problem is that many people 
 have different vision for the "better D" and they are often 
 incompatible. Some people for example would like to make  safe 
 the default, some people would like to drop OOP, some people 
 would like to drop the GC, many different ideas going on around.


Sorry, I didn't see your post. What would D3 contain? First of 
all, all half-baked features should go, anything that is only 
so-so and where it is evident that it doesn't work as it should 
because of conflicts with std.fancy etc., bin it.

In general, keep features that are industry proven, I'd say GC 
and OOP should be available. An alternative to GC too. So the 
first thing would be to check D3 against industry standards / use 
in general and also ask companies that use D specifically (what 
features they use and why etc.) There should be no ideological 
flamewars like OOP vs structs. If there's demand in the industry, 
keep that feature.

The rest, the bikeshedding bit about  safe etc., whatever is 
agreed upon in the end, it just has to be consistent. There's 
nothing worse for a developer than not knowing exactly what 
s/he's doing simply because the language is not clear about it. 
Clear and consistent rules. Also, talking about  safe and such 
features, one has to think about the long term implications of 
features. A feature might seem to be a good idea, but can cause 
loads of trouble in production. I think D has enough hindsight by 
now to make informed decisions. Informed, pragmatic, industry 
oriented - not ideological or nerdy.
Jun 27 2020