...Building a deep hole to create something great(Don).... Nice picture indeed.

D is unique :
Compared to Java/C#/Nemerle D is weak. (just have a look on the yield/iterator, reflection  discussions)
(we will have it in D 2.0  ~2008,  just a calculation)


D has an active community offering  a growing list of libraries ... :
We are talking about wrappers respective dead projects and let's be generous 10+ new entries in the D newsgroups within 24h is not that much....

D is quit popular :
So you think that D is ~#15 on tiobe really means somethink ? *Show me some real world applications written in D*. Let's say only 10.

But what makes me angry and keeps me away from using D from now on ,is that all suggestions regarding a *std.lib framework* build by the community are simply ignored by the Seniour D architect.

That's it.
Björn

What can I say?  When it comes to D, you have to like it and want it enough.  Most of the people here have discovered this.  What you say is not new: I'm afraid several key D players have ridden off into the sunset for similar reasons.

But I'm much more encouraged now compared with the past.  D has made excellent strides not just because of Walter but because of energetic, talented, and creative community that continues to grow.  Contrary to what you say, it's far from doom and gloom.  In fact, D has never been better, a fact that made me even more surprised at your post; if you had been around a year or two ago, things would have looked much more depressing than they do now. ;D

As far as wrappers go, any language that wants to start
with /something/ is best to start by using what's already tried,
tested, and true.  D does this, and, in the process, makes it self
immediately applicable to almost any task.  It would be a waste to
do otherwise.  As D gets more publicity, there is no doubt that new
D native libraries will be the order of the day.  I have no worries
about this.  In fact, I get more eager to see this happen every day.

As to the std.lib framework "by the community, for the community", have patience, you never know what can happen.  Question is: how much do you want that? ;)

-JJR

Well John you make me smile, I really enjoy your kind of humor.
It's 3 pm in the morning here in france, but I found your answere quit refreshing. So here's the answere.
Okay :
What picks on my nerves is the waste of human resources and intelligence, just because Walter is not willing to coordinate and delegate std.lib work to the community.

Maybe it's because D hasn't still reached 1.0. (beside, wonder why)
*To offer something concrete, we allready have :*

deprecated
{
	void oldFoo();
}

//so what about ...

future
{
	yield ....	
}

/* Has to pass the semantic analyses but will produce no code.
   (means only D Front End Development required)
   Enables feature freeze without stand still and  std.lib development.
*/


Björn



John Reimer schrieb:
> What can I say?  When it comes to D, you have to like it and want
> it enough.  Most of the people here have discovered this.  What you
> say is not new: I'm afraid several key D players have ridden off
> into the sunset for similar reasons.
> 
> But I'm much more encouraged now compared with the past.  D has
> made excellent strides not just because of Walter but because of
> energetic, talented, and creative community that continues to
> grow.  Contrary to what you say, it's far from doom and gloom.  In
> fact, D has never been better, a fact that made me even more
> surprised at your post; if you had been around a year or two ago,
> things would have looked much more depressing than they do now. ;D
> 
> As far as wrappers go, any language that wants to start
> with /something/ is best to start by using what's already tried,
> tested, and true.  D does this, and, in the process, makes it self
> immediately applicable to almost any task.  It would be a waste to
> do otherwise.  As D gets more publicity, there is no doubt that new
> D native libraries will be the order of the day.  I have no worries
> about this.  In fact, I get more eager to see this happen every day.
> 
> As to the std.lib framework "by the community, for the community",
> have patience, you never know what can happen.  Question is: how
> much do you want that? ;)
> 
> -JJR

BLS wrote:
> That's it.

I know how you feel.

I've been here for the last 5 or 6 years. And _every_single_year_ we've actually and honestly believed that _next_ year, that's when D 1.0 comes out and we'll take over the world. Yes, really.

On the other hand, only this month Lua got into the top 50 on Tiobe. And I've always thought that Lua is a lot more famous than D. !

(Could it simply be their just impressive web presence?)

There are other languages that have stagnated. Take Euphoria as an example. It had great promise a few years ago. It could have been all that Visual Basic programmers never did even understand to dream about. And it has been the motivator for quite a few improvement suggestions in this NG throughout the years. (Multiple return values, guarded range types, etc.)

Either Rob Craig got a Real Life, or the development simply got bigger than a single person could handle. (Oh, holy God of Bits, don't ever let that happen to Walter!)

Euphoria has an applications oriented group of regular users (whereas the corresponding D crows is more library oriented), an interesting web framework including excellent meritocracy handling, and generally a more professional and dynamic looking web presence.

And Rob released the entire thing to Open Source a few weeks ago:

> After considering various ways to make a big impact
> on the future of Euphoria for v3.0, including various schemes
> to partially open up the source while still retaining some
> income, I have finally decided to make Euphoria completely
> free of charge, and completely open source.
> 
> This will cost me money, but I can't see the current
> system going on much longer, where a whole programming
> language community is dependent on one guy to add features, fix bugs etc. The amount of code that I have to maintain
> has been steadily growing over the years, and I have to admit that my progress has been slowing.

((http://www.listfilter.com/cgi-bin/esearch.exu?fromMonth=9&fromYear=B&toMonth=9&toYear=B&postedBy=rds&keywords=%22sep+19%22))

Going back to BLS's feelings, maybe D is in the same spot as Euphoria, in a couple of years: either release the whole thing to the PD or face immediate extinction.

---

To the more positive side: never did I think we'd be on Tiobe as #15 before 2010! Never did I think we'd ever fare as well as we've done on the Language Shoot-Out. Never did I think folks like Alexandriescu would pay truckloads of expensive brain-cell-hours for the good of D. And I thought it'd be like 5 years from now before we ever get amazing folks like Pragma and Don with us. (Of course not forgetting everybody else!)

---

So, D is just getting air under its wings. Right now is a time for a discontinuation in D's history. But I do understand the frustration and anger -- that maybe a few others too feel as strongly as you do.

One alternative is to just shrug and go away. Then, after (say) 18 months, one could come an pay us a visit and see if we've gotten anywhere in the meantime. This is not actually as stupid an idea as it sounds off hand. The 18 months should give one some perspective, and the distance from D might let one see the competition and other alternatives more clearly and in proportion.

> D is quit popular :
> So you think that D is ~#15 on tiobe really means somethink ? *Show me
> some real world applications written in D*. Let's say only 10.
>

My first encounters with D:

http://www.asahi-net.or.jp/~cs8k-cyu/index_e.html http://homepage2.nifty.com/isshiki/

I think things would be better if only Phobos would be hosted at some open-source repository, preferably sourceforge.

Perhaps we can already do that? Walter, can somebody put Phobos on sourceforge? And by can I mean, is s/he allowed to?

L.

If it can't be put in sourceforge, surely it could be put into a versioning repository (svn, cvs, etc.) of some sort.

Since it seems like digitalmars.com has a fairly reasonable hosting arrangement, this might even be possible using the current server and hosting company.

I think this has come up before, and Walter wasn't really interested in that.  I've really found version control systems as being a huge way to improve software quality and developer cooperation, though (even if only Walter had write access.)

-[Unknown]


> I think things would be better if only Phobos would be hosted at some open-source repository, preferably sourceforge.
> 
> Perhaps we can already do that? Walter, can somebody put Phobos on sourceforge? And by can I mean, is s/he allowed to?
> 
> L. 
> 
> 

BLS wrote:
> ...Building a deep hole to create something great(Don).... Nice picture
> indeed.
> 
> D is unique :
> Compared to Java/C#/Nemerle D is weak. (just have a look on the
> yield/iterator, reflection  discussions)
> (we will have it in D 2.0  ~2008,  just a calculation)
> 
> 
> D has an active community offering  a growing list of libraries ... : We are talking about wrappers respective dead projects and let's be generous 10+ new entries in the D newsgroups within 24h is not that much....
> 
> D is quit popular :
> So you think that D is ~#15 on tiobe really means somethink ? *Show me
> some real world applications written in D*. Let's say only 10.
> 
> But what makes me angry and keeps me away from using D from now on ,is that all suggestions regarding a *std.lib framework* build by the community are simply ignored by the Seniour D architect.
> 
> That's it.
> Björn
> 

to become a *really* popular language (as-is used in lot's of big projects) a language has to have good libraries available.

D has really easy linkage to all C libraries, if I'm not mistaken. That's good for a multi-language environment. But to position D against (well not against against :-) ), D needs to come with batteries included, or at least have some standard/best practices libraries available (I doubt a formal standardization is needed). Those batteries could be just wrappers around existing library in other languages. I doubt whether this is a good choice, because of the dependencies on other languages, build tools, ...

If other reasonings can/need be give, please do so ..

So back to libraries for D in D :-)
What could be the reasons the Senior Darch is *ignoring* this?
- he doesn't see a need for it (right now)
   => so it's low on his priority list
- he doesn't have the resources to coordinate such an effort
- he's planning to release D 1.0 before starting to think on libraries
   => are we talking about specifications for libraries
   => are we talking about a specific implementation (license?)
- building libraries when important features are still being added
   => that might be regrettable in the not to distant future
   => when do you start with "standard" libraries, when do you stop
evolving the language
- are we talking about minimal batteries, or full blown batteries?

OTOH, "Not for me anymore", I've been here a few years back, and I must say that the current DMD/GDC compilers are quite impressive. In my eyes they start to mature quite nicely.

En tout cas, merci to Walter, who is putting a lot of his personal resources (time, energy, ...) in developing a real evolution in in the C branch of programming languages.

roel

rm wrote:
> So back to libraries for D in D :-)
> What could be the reasons the Senior Darch is *ignoring* this?
> - he doesn't see a need for it (right now)
>    => so it's low on his priority list
> - he doesn't have the resources to coordinate such an effort
> - he's planning to release D 1.0 before starting to think on libraries
>    => are we talking about specifications for libraries
>    => are we talking about a specific implementation (license?)
> - building libraries when important features are still being added
>    => that might be regrettable in the not to distant future
>    => when do you start with "standard" libraries, when do you stop
> evolving the language
> - are we talking about minimal batteries, or full blown batteries?

The biggest problem with writing libraries now is that they may need to be partly rewritten after every big change in the language in order to take advantage of all the new possibilities.

Walter is a true compiler expert, but I think he wants to leave the development of libraries to those who are more experienced with different kinds of frameworks. Besides, he already has more than enough work in extending the language and maintaining the compiler.

I've been here since 2003. What bugs me the most is that D (the language) still does not have an up-to-date roadmap anywhere. Ok, many of us know what features are postponed to 2.0, but for a newcomer things look pretty confusing. http://digitalmars.com/d/future.html is always a bit out of date. Something like http://trac.edgewall.org/roadmap would be bit more illustrative.. :)

There has also been a lot of talk about 1.0. It feels frustrating that even Walter doesn't know when to release it. It's not like the end of world if 1.0 is going to be buggy or fundamentally broken - there's always room for maintenance releases (1.x). A stable release means feature freeze - there's no such thing as a 100% bug free program.

But seriously, I think D has never been as good as it is now. Keep up the good work, Walter!

Jari-Matti Mäkelä wrote:
> Walter is a true compiler expert, but I think he wants to leave the
> development of libraries to those who are more experienced with
> different kinds of frameworks. Besides, he already has more than enough
> work in extending the language and maintaining the compiler.

What I'm mindful of is I endorsed DWT as the official D gui library, which promptly killed it.