• Stewart Gordon (8/8) Jun 18 2007 After a few years of work, it was only the beginning of this year that w...
• Robert Fraser (2/14) Jun 18 2007
• Myron Alexander (7/18) Jun 18 2007 DMD 2.0 is a conceptual change in the handling of parameter and variable...
• Jascha Wetzel (20/31) Jun 18 2007 it's as important to improve the language as to improve it's major
• Georg Wrede (39/50) Jun 18 2007 Well, Stewart, I'm as much out of the loop as anybody. So, all I can

"Stewart Gordon" <smjg_1998 yahoo.com> writes:

After a few years of work, it was only the beginning of this year that we 
reached 1.0.

Yet there's already been quite a bit of talk about 2.0, and now even an 
alpha release.

What's going on here?  There's still the majority of d1.0blocker nominees, 
including such quite serious ones as 302 and 677.  Shouldn't we work towards 
getting 1.0 finished first?

Stewart. 

Robert Fraser <fraserofthenight gmail.coim> writes:

There'll be branches, so most of the fixes will be applied to both. 2.0 is a
way to add more features without breaking 1.0-compliant code.

Stewart Gordon Wrote:

 After a few years of work, it was only the beginning of this year that we 
 reached 1.0.
 
 Yet there's already been quite a bit of talk about 2.0, and now even an 
 alpha release.
 
 What's going on here?  There's still the majority of d1.0blocker nominees, 
 including such quite serious ones as 302 and 677.  Shouldn't we work towards 
 getting 1.0 finished first?
 
 Stewart. 
 

Myron Alexander <someone somewhere.com> writes:

Stewart Gordon wrote:
 After a few years of work, it was only the beginning of this year that 
 we reached 1.0.
 
 Yet there's already been quite a bit of talk about 2.0, and now even an 
 alpha release.
 
 What's going on here?  There's still the majority of d1.0blocker 
 nominees, including such quite serious ones as 302 and 677.  Shouldn't 
 we work towards getting 1.0 finished first?
 
 Stewart.

DMD 2.0 is a conceptual change in the handling of parameter and variable 
constness. I was not following the debate so I don't know all the 
details but there were a few good cases presented that convinced Walter 
of the necessity to change things a bit. Thus 2.0.

Regards,

Myron.

Jascha Wetzel <firstname mainia.de> writes:

it's as important to improve the language as to improve it's major 
implementation. they're two different things, though, and shouldn't 
mutually block each other's progress.

i was starting out writing the paragraph below, but then it boiled down 
to the 2 sentences above ;)

dividing development into creation and maintenance, i think tasks from 
these two categories can and should be interleaved or parallel. that is 
mainly because the kind of work they require is very different and 
restricting oneself to one category is restricting the overall 
efficiency of the development process.
there are exceptions to this where, by creating new things before fixing 
others, you raise problems to the power of what they would be if they're 
fixed first, but in many cases the problem sets are completely or 
largely disjoint. this, to my understanding, is the case in the changes 
we've seen in D 2.0.
it is the overall feature-set * stability factor that makes the project 
valuable. you can improve on both sides to improve the project.
particularly the const-complex is a feature that, imho, put D in a 
not-yet-grown-up state if compared to C++.

Stewart Gordon wrote:
 After a few years of work, it was only the beginning of this year that 
 we reached 1.0.
 
 Yet there's already been quite a bit of talk about 2.0, and now even an 
 alpha release.
 
 What's going on here?  There's still the majority of d1.0blocker 
 nominees, including such quite serious ones as 302 and 677.  Shouldn't 
 we work towards getting 1.0 finished first?
 
 Stewart.

Georg Wrede <georg nospam.org> writes:

Stewart Gordon wrote:
 After a few years of work, it was only the beginning of this year that 
 we reached 1.0.
 
 Yet there's already been quite a bit of talk about 2.0, and now even an 
 alpha release.
 
 What's going on here?  There's still the majority of d1.0blocker 
 nominees, including such quite serious ones as 302 and 677.  Shouldn't 
 we work towards getting 1.0 finished first?
 
 Stewart.

Well, Stewart, I'm as much out of the loop as anybody. So, all I can 
respond to this with is pure conjecture, personal beliefs, and a 5+ year 
history in this NG.

Looks to me like Walter nailed 1.0 as a result of mob pressure. We were 
all getting fed up with D continuously staying a moving target. Any 
serious developer considering D for the company would simply ignore D as 
long as you couldn't guess a month ahead what's goint into the next 
release. And at the same time some serious bugs kept on not being fixed. 
Not to mention a few pets that stayed in the language despite of 
unanimos and animous resentment from the community.

So, D1.0 came out. IIRC, it was a pretty arbitrary decision, based on a 
date, never a feature set becoming completed. It would've been quite ok 
but for the fact that, precisely at that instant the things about meta 
programming got seeded and instantly gained momentum beyond anybody's 
expectations. And, just when that almost got settled, we then got Andrei 
in the team, and avenues to heaven suddenly became within actual reach.

You and I both know that when developing a major app, we tend to fix 
first the interesting and challenging issues, and only after everything 
else is done, then to tend to the mundane, small, and labourious things. 
While Walter is superhuman, seems he's still got a few human traits 
left. (No offense here, Senna and Schumacher weren't perfect either.)


Finally, we have to remember that Walter is doing this frackin' alone. 
There are few other persons who could've handled it at all, and all 
along he's even keeping his marriage intact. There's a bullet proof man 
for you if I ever saw one!

If it were in my power, I'd pay for a couple of talented programmers to 
debug and finish D1.0 for Walter, so he could give 100% to D2 with Andrei.

But frankly, I'm really getting concerned with this issue. D is going 
down on Tiobe, the regular professional developer (who should be our 
concern number one, by a wide margin(!)) is getting increasingly 
bewildered as to what version to use, and whether it is at all feasible 
to jump an erratically moving fast train for dependable access to his 
target.

And it's not only a matter of sharing resources between D1 and D2, it's 
also a matter of presenting the entire setup to the new comer. There 
really ought to be some web pages carefully and _prominently_ describing 
what to do if one belongs to the (for us remote) group of Actual Users 
of the language.