On Tuesday, 27 November 2012 at 21:23:12 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:That was more than a breaking change. That was a massive paradigm shift. All the drama going on back then was rooted more in philosophical differences and the Phobos/Tango divide, than changes to the language. What's being discussed here is breakage on a much smaller scale.
On 11/28/2012 5:25 AM, Max Samukha wrote:
Please stop repeating that "will break lots of code" mantra. D user base
is very small and it doesn't grow *because* issues like the one
discussed do not get fixed. When they are fixed people may start using
the language. And *then* you would have to worry about backward
compatibility. Look at the recent Manu's complaints and see what people
who would really use the language have wanted from it for years.
I understand what you're saying, but the counterpoint is we lost half the D community when D2 broke D1 code. We still have at least one major D1 user that still finds it impractical to upgrade to D2.
I've always said that it's the little things in aggregate that make D such a wonderful language to work with. But the flipside of that is the little annoyances in aggregate can make it frustrating to work with. New users coming to a language often have little patience. IMO, their encountering these little annoyances before the good stuff takes hold is a far more pressing issue than a few minor breaking changes.
I've no idea what sort of commercial interests are using D in production, but I'd still confidently make the bet that a few breaking changes now (for issues that people find frustrating) would do more good than harm in the long run. Especially if they are introduced gradually and with time to understand their ramifications.