• Steve Teale <steve.teale britseyeview.com> Jul 13 2007

Steve Teale <steve.teale britseyeview.com> writes:

Tristam MacDonald Wrote:

 The problem is that I (as a user) want to use one library. And if one 3rd
party library I want to use depends on Phobos, and another on Tango, they
either have to be entirely interoperable - correct me if I am wrong, but this
doesn't seem to be the case - or I end up rolling my own, because neither one
does what I want.
 
 I quite frankly don't like Tango's Pythonesque 'batteries included' approach,
but that is of course entirely a matter of personal opinion. I am not fond of
Phobos either, mostly because of a complete lack of templated containers.
 
 What I would like to see is an approach which combines a small, lean 'core'
library (just the basics like IO and containers), and then have the 'batteries'
implemented as distinct small libraries on top of the core. This allows one to
choose exactly what functionality one needs, with out the extra 'fluff'.
 
 Robert Fraser Wrote:
 
 What's so wrong with having two standard libraries and letting users choose
the one they feel more comfortable with? Having come from a Java background, I
find Tango much easier to work with and powerful than Phobos, but to each his
own. I just wish it was easier to link against one or the other (compiler
switch...) instead of having to switch between them all the time.
 
 Steve Teale Wrote:
 
 It bothers me that Phobos and Tango seem to be completely divergent.  One of
the things that makes a language successful is that it has a good standard
library.  It seems that with D, you have to be a betting man - which standard
library will prevail.
 
 It seemes to me that given Walter's definition of the language - a system
programming language - that Phobos is closer to the mark.  If users want a more
object oriented standard library, that's all well and good, but it should be a
shoe-in, then if you want to use the OO stuff you can, but code that's been
written to work with Phobos should work unmodified with other libraries.  (Note
the recent discussion on C++ security). Any other approach seems to me to reek
of vanity.
 
 I am not saying that Phobos is perfect.  It has lots of omissions, but I have
a feeling that it is about at the right level to enable authors to write the
more OO stuff on top of it.
 
 I'm sure that this is a sensitive subject, but there you go!  I think we all
agree that Walter has done a damn good job on D, so why should we reject his
thinking on Phobos?  I've been watching Walter for a long time now, and in my
book, he knows as much about his subject as anyone does, especially considering
the coverage that's expected of him.
 
 If D is to succeed, I think we should work together rather than compete.  I'd
like to see a much more formal system for contributors to take responsibility
for areas of Phobos.  Maybe it exists, but if it does, it's hardly in your
face.  I'd also like to see people back off on trying to replace it.  Let's
improve it and augment it.
 
 






Your point is what got me going in the first place.  I wanted to use DDL, and
the first thing the documentation told me was to install Tango.