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digitalmars.D - Is D really community driven?

reply downs <default_357-line yahoo.de> writes:
The D homepage makes the claim that D "[...] is not governed by a corporate
agenda or any 
overarching theory of programming. The needs and contributions of the D
programming community form 
the direction it goes."
Recent discussions on the newsgroup regarding assert with Object references
that might be null (no, 
segfault is _not_ a valid form of error checking ^^), CbD parameters or the
older question of "!in" 
come to mind as cases where the D community, as represented by this forum,
pretty much voted as a 
majority to introduce a certain behavior and Walter decided differently, out of
reasons that many 
posters would, and did, disagree with.

So, the question is: is D really ultimately community driven? I have no real
problem with it being 
a singular effort by Walter, but then he shouldn't claim that "the needs and
contributions of the D 
programming community" et cetera. Unless he's saying he knows the needs of the
community better 
than the community itself :)
  --downs
Jul 23 2007
next sibling parent BCS <ao pathlink.com> writes:
Reply to Downs,


 The D homepage makes the claim that D "[...] is not governed by a
 corporate agenda or any overarching theory of programming. The 
 needs and contributions of the D programming community form
 the direction it goes." Recent discussions on the newsgroup 
 regarding assert with Object references that might be null (no,
 segfault is _not_ a valid form of error checking ^^), CbD parameters
 or the older question of "!in" come to mind as cases where the D 
 community, as represented by this forum, pretty much voted as a
 majority to introduce a certain behavior and Walter decided
 differently, out of reasons that many posters would, and did, disagree 
 with. So, the question is: is D really ultimately community driven? I have
 no real problem with it being a singular effort by Walter, but then he
 shouldn't claim that "the needs and contributions of the D
 programming community" et cetera. Unless he's saying he knows the
 needs of the community better than the community itself :)
 --downs


Water drives, we all say where we want to go, but Walter still pick how we 
get there.
Jul 23 2007
prev sibling next sibling parent reply Manfred Nowak <svv1999 hotmail.com> writes:
downs wrote

[...]

 form the direction it goes."


 
Here is a still from the movie "Time Cop":

http://outnow.ch/Media/Img/1994/Timecop/dvd-film.ws/09?w=720&h=405

The dialog goes like this:

Max Walker: Read it.
Rollerblades: [reading the boot extended in his face] "Wolverine"?
Max Walker: Between the lines.

Hope this helps :-)
-manfred
Jul 23 2007
next sibling parent downs <default_357-line yahoo.de> writes:
Manfred Nowak wrote:

 Max Walker: Read it.
 Rollerblades: [reading the boot extended in his face] "Wolverine"?
 Max Walker: Between the lines.
 


I don't understand what you are saying here. D is community driven, except not?
I'm confused ...

 Hope this helps :-)


Not really :-)

 -manfred 


  -downs
Jul 23 2007
prev sibling parent reply BCS <ao pathlink.com> writes:
Reply to Manfred,


Did you make that post? The triplicate posting makes me think there might 
be something else going on.
Jul 23 2007
parent Manfred Nowak <svv1999 hotmail.com> writes:
BCS wrote


 The triplicate posting makes me think


Sorry.
First post was with a wrong ID, that I used for cancelling some spam in 
this forum. Second post was with my translation from a german copy of 
"Time Cop" back to english. Third and last post included the english 
dialog from IMDB.
Sorry again.

-manfred
Jul 23 2007
prev sibling next sibling parent Robert Fraser <fraserofthenight gmail.com> writes:
downs Wrote:


 The D homepage makes the claim that D "[...] is not governed by a corporate
agenda or any 
 overarching theory of programming. The needs and contributions of the D
programming community form 
 the direction it goes."
 Recent discussions on the newsgroup regarding assert with Object references
that might be null (no, 
 segfault is _not_ a valid form of error checking ^^), CbD parameters or the
older question of "!in" 
 come to mind as cases where the D community, as represented by this forum,
pretty much voted as a 
 majority to introduce a certain behavior and Walter decided differently, out
of reasons that many 
 posters would, and did, disagree with.
 
 So, the question is: is D really ultimately community driven? I have no real
problem with it being 
 a singular effort by Walter, but then he shouldn't claim that "the needs and
contributions of the D 
 programming community" et cetera. Unless he's saying he knows the needs of the
community better 
 than the community itself :)
   --downs


Yes and no...  I think some of the __traits stuff was inspired by a post by
Kirk McDonald (although I think Walter was planning some of this stuff for a
while), extern(System) was a direct response after the outcry against the
bugfix that removed version(Windows{extern(Windows):}, etc. There have been a
number of times in the past things like that have come up.

On the other hand, if Walter doesn't like an idea (CbD...), he's probably not
going to put it in the language.

I think we'll know a lot more come the conference.
Jul 23 2007
prev sibling next sibling parent Mike Parker <aldacron71 yahoo.com> writes:
downs wrote:

 The D homepage makes the claim that D "[...] is not governed by a 
 corporate agenda or any overarching theory of programming. The needs and 
 contributions of the D programming community form the direction it goes."
 Recent discussions on the newsgroup regarding assert with Object 
 references that might be null (no, segfault is _not_ a valid form of 
 error checking ^^), CbD parameters or the older question of "!in" come 
 to mind as cases where the D community, as represented by this forum, 
 pretty much voted as a majority to introduce a certain behavior and 
 Walter decided differently, out of reasons that many posters would, and 
 did, disagree with.
 
 So, the question is: is D really ultimately community driven? I have no 
 real problem with it being a singular effort by Walter, but then he 
 shouldn't claim that "the needs and contributions of the D programming 
 community" et cetera. Unless he's saying he knows the needs of the 
 community better than the community itself :)
  --downs


'Community-driven' is too strong of a term. Any language designed by 
community would likely not result in something most people would want to 
use. 'Community-influenced' is a lot closer to the mark. The passage you 
quote from the homepage can certainly be interpreted the wrong way, 
though. The point is that voices from the community can, and do, affect 
the direction D takes because it isn't designed by committee or to meet 
corporate goals. Walter's ears are always open to great ideas from 
D-ites, but the final word will always rest with him.
Jul 23 2007
prev sibling parent reply Bruno Medeiros <brunodomedeiros+spam com.gmail> writes:
downs wrote:

 The D homepage makes the claim that D "[...] is not governed by a 
 corporate agenda or any overarching theory of programming. The needs and 
 contributions of the D programming community form the direction it goes."
 Recent discussions on the newsgroup regarding assert with Object 
 references that might be null (no, segfault is _not_ a valid form of 
 error checking ^^), CbD parameters or the older question of "!in" come 
 to mind as cases where the D community, as represented by this forum, 
 pretty much voted as a majority to introduce a certain behavior and 
 Walter decided differently, out of reasons that many posters would, and 
 did, disagree with.
 
 So, the question is: is D really ultimately community driven? I have no 
 real problem with it being a singular effort by Walter, but then he 
 shouldn't claim that "the needs and contributions of the D programming 
 community" et cetera. Unless he's saying he knows the needs of the 
 community better than the community itself :)
  --downs


D, the language itself at least, is Inner Circle driven. (I say this 
facetiously but seriously)
Meaning that in the great majority of situations Walter only considers 
the opinion of those of the Inner Circle, even when there is large 
community consensus.
I think the cases where Walter has actually changed the language upon 
the opinions of the D community (aka the Outer Circle? :P ), was, in a 
rough sense, when there was no parallel to C++ whatsoever, and thus 
there was no influence or opinion from the Inner Circle or the C++ 
community.
Some examples that pop into mind: 'lazy', and the FQN, aliasing, 
selective imports.

-- 
Bruno Medeiros - MSc in CS/E student
http://www.prowiki.org/wiki4d/wiki.cgi?BrunoMedeiros#D
Jul 25 2007
next sibling parent David L. Davis <SpottedTiger yahoo.com> writes:
Bruno Medeiros Wrote:


 downs wrote:

 The D homepage makes the claim that D "[...] is not governed by a 
 corporate agenda or any overarching theory of programming. The needs and 
 contributions of the D programming community form the direction it goes."
 Recent discussions on the newsgroup regarding assert with Object 
 references that might be null (no, segfault is _not_ a valid form of 
 error checking ^^), CbD parameters or the older question of "!in" come 
 to mind as cases where the D community, as represented by this forum, 
 pretty much voted as a majority to introduce a certain behavior and 
 Walter decided differently, out of reasons that many posters would, and 
 did, disagree with.
 
 So, the question is: is D really ultimately community driven? I have no 
 real problem with it being a singular effort by Walter, but then he 
 shouldn't claim that "the needs and contributions of the D programming 
 community" et cetera. Unless he's saying he knows the needs of the 
 community better than the community itself :)
  --downs


 
 D, the language itself at least, is Inner Circle driven. (I say this 
 facetiously but seriously)
 Meaning that in the great majority of situations Walter only considers 
 the opinion of those of the Inner Circle, even when there is large 
 community consensus.
 I think the cases where Walter has actually changed the language upon 
 the opinions of the D community (aka the Outer Circle? :P ), was, in a 
 rough sense, when there was no parallel to C++ whatsoever, and thus 
 there was no influence or opinion from the Inner Circle or the C++ 
 community.
 Some examples that pop into mind: 'lazy', and the FQN, aliasing, 
 selective imports.
 
 -- 
 Bruno Medeiros - MSc in CS/E student
 http://www.prowiki.org/wiki4d/wiki.cgi?BrunoMedeiros#D


   I recall that the setting a function's parameter to a default value as being
one of those cases too.

David L. Davis
Jul 25 2007
prev sibling parent reply Ilya Minkov <minkov in.tum.de> writes:
Hello.

Bruno Medeiros wrote:

 D, the language itself at least, is Inner Circle driven. (I say this
 facetiously but seriously)
 Meaning that in the great majority of situations Walter only considers
 the opinion of those of the Inner Circle, even when there is large
 community consensus.


This is certainly NOT TRUE.

I was here back when this newsgroup did not even exist, and the volume of
communication was not that large. One could thoroughly read each and every
post within a reasonable amount of time. In fact, one could even read all
of the history, all of the communication from day 1, this was quite a
bearable task. Something i did back then.

Back then, Walter read everything, and took his time to think about each and
every proposition. One would always get a clear answer, yes, no, and why
exactly no. Thus, if a proposition came which would disrupt the language in
some manner, one would know it pretty quick and the discussions went down.

What changed? D gained lots of public attention. Walter still managed to
read most of the newsgroup, but he started putting off thinking about
propositions. He simply didn't have enough time. Still, it has always been
possible to convince Walter.

What happened later? The volume of communication grew and grew, and i did in
fact quit because i couldn't follow. I frankly don't know how Walter
manages to get through all that, but i believe he certainly cannot give the
same attention to every person. People who have been able to articulate
their opinion properly are likely to get more attention, because it always
means a lot of work to Walter

So, if ever possible. when there is a request, following information has to
be supplied:

- specific usage cases. what gets better? also: what gets worse? As
complete, as detailed as only possible. This is a lot of work to supply. It
may seem obvious, but it has been shown that this needs to be done anyway.
- interaction of the change with ALL possible features of the language. What
improves, what breaks? What features seem like might be affected, but in
fact aren't?
- comparison with other languages. It must include not only the feature
itself, but also the features that might be affected. This requieres
reference of other sources - e.g. circumventions of some problem in
libraries for other languages would be a pretty heavy hint that this also
needs to be adressed in D.

Every piece of information on this list either has to be supplied
explicitly, or Walter has to work it out himself, and in fact he usually
has to. Never forget this!

Someone with a lot of D experience is obviously better in position to supply
use cases. The questions on interaction requiere experience AND in-depth
understanding for both D and a number of other languages.


 I think the cases where Walter has actually changed the language upon
 the opinions of the D community (aka the Outer Circle? :P ), was, in a
 rough sense, when there was no parallel to C++ whatsoever, and thus
 there was no influence or opinion from the Inner Circle or the C++
 community.


Convincing Walter on core issues IS possible. It has been done. However,
even the most respected and knowledgeable members of community have to put
a great effort into that.

However, all the core issues have been discussed to death, 2 or 3 years ago
or even more. With most things, we have tossed around every possibilty and
decided that it just wouldn't work at some point. Nontheless, the same
requests pop up again and again, perhaps in some other form, and there even
seems to be some "consensus" among those who request. But it just wouldn't
work.

Perhaps extra work is needed on documenting such things. I am not going to
search through the newsgroup archives, but if you care to put together some
of the more important requests, i might want to put up a wiki page with a
thorough discussion.

I must say, i'm glad that this is a Designer language, not a
community-driven language -- it is surprisingly both consistent and
powerful for a language that is based upon C. Nontheless, i must say,
Walter is completely free of arrogance. He has been fair to EVERYONE,
within his possibilities.

-eye/photoAllergics

(uh, sorry, my english is getting rusty. :)
Jul 28 2007
parent reply Manfred Nowak <svv1999 hotmail.com> writes:
Ilya Minkov wrote


 interaction of the change with ALL possible features of the
 language. What improves, what breaks?


If for all those features the underlying mathematical models would be 
known, it would be much simpler to detect the interferences described.

-manfred
Jul 30 2007
parent renoX <renosky free.fr> writes:
Manfred Nowak a écrit :

 Ilya Minkov wrote
 

 interaction of the change with ALL possible features of the
 language. What improves, what breaks?


 If for all those features the underlying mathematical models would be 
 known, it would be much simpler to detect the interferences described.
 
 -manfred


Bah, only for the tiny minority of people who are able to understand 
those 'mathematical models'.
Seems to me a lot of efforts with little benefits, improved 
documentation and higher DbC usage have a better effort/reward trade-off.

renoX
Aug 03 2007