On 2011-12-10 22:19, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
> Hello everyone,
>
>
> This is the end of the year, a good time to look both back and forward.
> Walter and I have had a long discussion about our strategy going forth.
> But before that, let's take a quick look at this year.
>
> By all accounts, 2011 has been a terrific year for D. There has been
> unprecedented growth in the community; the disreputation of a
> fragmented, balkanized community is finally becoming a matter of the
> past; the community flame wars that were the norm in the past have given
> way to constructive dialog; there's more interest and more talk about D
> in public and private events; TDPL has been selling steadily; D's brand
> and major position on the programming languages landscape have become
> recognizable to many programmers; and most importantly, the community
> contribution to the compiler and standard library design and
> implementation has blown off the most optimistic expectations.
>
> Going forward, we want to focus on D's core strengths: expressiveness,
> modeling power, and efficiency. We believe D is a very compelling
> programming language of this era, and we want to substantiate that
> belief with equally compelling libraries and applications.
>
> In order to increase focus and unity in the language, we are
> discontinuing support for D1 on December 31, 2012. That's more than one
> year away, which gives enough time to D1 users to migrate libraries and
> applications to D2.
>
> Phasing D1 away will not only clarify our vision, but also free up
> considerable time to concentrate on D's two largest issues: (1) quality
> of compiler implementation and (2) breadth of the standard library.
> These two matters prevent users from fully tapping into all of D's core
> assets. They affect expressiveness because code that's supposed to work
> doesn't or necessitates ugly workarounds; they affect modeling power
> because bugs prevent full creative uses of the language, and lacuna in
> the standard library limit the "bricks" to use when building; and they
> affect efficiency because, evidently, a quality compiler and a good
> standard library are essential ingredients in writing efficient code.
>
> Best wishes for the next year and hopefully many years to come to an
> awesome community. Let's continue working together to reach D's
> ambitious potential.
>
>
> Thanks,
>
> Andrei

That was a disappointment to hear. I really hope that D2 will be more ready than it is now.

-- 
/Jacob Carlborg

On Sun, 11 Dec 2011 22:57:02 +0000, Jesse Phillips wrote:

> I haven't used D1 for a long time so I can't claim a bad choice here.

Actually I think I can state an opinion here. The two things that stand out in my mind are.

* There has been a statement of supporting D1 while it is in use (or at least has a decent number of users). Maybe there aren't any, I don't see replies claiming such.

* One argument against dropping it was that the bugs were common between both languages, so the effort isn't that great to maintain both. Did that change with the increase in issues being fixed?

So I tried a thought experiment. What if this was D2. If D3 was taking its place? If D just got up and died one year from now? How is the Python users handling it?

http://www.reddit.com/tb/n3q7q

And I'd be ok with it. I guess that makes sense, I have been using D2 even with it breaking code every couple steps. But the truth is, I'm using it for what it is now, not what it will be. What I use right now will still be here, and all the code I'm using is available.

Sure getting better *cough* tool *coff* support and shared libraries is something to look forward to, but I'm not using them now.

(So in one year, D will live on, and lets hope this improvement continues)

PS. The reddit discussion about Python3's UTF support is interesting. Sounds like D got it right, and Python 3 failed.

On 12/12/2011 10:26 PM, Jesse Phillips wrote:
> PS. The reddit discussion about Python3's UTF support is interesting.
> Sounds like D got it right, and Python 3 failed.

I had the huge advantage of having done two UTF implementations previously (a Java compiler and a Javascript compiler). Interestingly, C++11 has adopted fundamentally the same design as D.


"Python also uses the environment variables (which as you know where garbage) to decide on the default encoding of files."

That can never end well :-)

On 12/12/2011 10:26 PM, Jesse Phillips wrote:
> On Sun, 11 Dec 2011 22:57:02 +0000, Jesse Phillips wrote:
>
>> I haven't used D1 for a long time so I can't claim a bad choice here.
>
> Actually I think I can state an opinion here. The two things that stand
> out in my mind are.
>
> * There has been a statement of supporting D1 while it is in use (or at
> least has a decent number of users). Maybe there aren't any, I don't see
> replies claiming such.

There don't seem to be many anymore.


> * One argument against dropping it was that the bugs were common between
> both languages, so the effort isn't that great to maintain both. Did that
> change with the increase in issues being fixed?

Not really, but the code bases steadily diverge and it's getting steadily harder. It was more a matter of focus.

On 2011-12-13 07:26, Jesse Phillips wrote:
> On Sun, 11 Dec 2011 22:57:02 +0000, Jesse Phillips wrote:
>
>> I haven't used D1 for a long time so I can't claim a bad choice here.
>
> Actually I think I can state an opinion here. The two things that stand
> out in my mind are.
>
> * There has been a statement of supporting D1 while it is in use (or at
> least has a decent number of users). Maybe there aren't any, I don't see
> replies claiming such.

I'm still using D1.

-- 
/Jacob Carlborg

Walter Bright Wrote:

> On 12/12/2011 10:26 PM, Jesse Phillips wrote:
> > On Sun, 11 Dec 2011 22:57:02 +0000, Jesse Phillips wrote:
> >
> >> I haven't used D1 for a long time so I can't claim a bad choice here.
> >
> > Actually I think I can state an opinion here. The two things that stand out in my mind are.
> >
> > * There has been a statement of supporting D1 while it is in use (or at least has a decent number of users). Maybe there aren't any, I don't see replies claiming such.
> 
> There don't seem to be many anymore.
> 
> 
I'm decent, and I'm user of D1, still got some legacy code to maintain. Discontinuing it is not a problem for me as it is bundled with 2 year old D1 version that checked out for bugs that could matter.

Moving all efforts to polishing D2 is the right way.

"Jacob Carlborg" <doob@me.com> wrote in message news:jc785g$1hpa$2@digitalmars.com...
> On 2011-12-13 07:26, Jesse Phillips wrote:
>> On Sun, 11 Dec 2011 22:57:02 +0000, Jesse Phillips wrote:
>>
>>> I haven't used D1 for a long time so I can't claim a bad choice here.
>>
>> Actually I think I can state an opinion here. The two things that stand
>> out in my mind are.
>>
>> * There has been a statement of supporting D1 while it is in use (or at
>> least has a decent number of users). Maybe there aren't any, I don't see
>> replies claiming such.
>
> I'm still using D1.
>

That'll be one then :-)

> -- 
> /Jacob Carlborg 

On 10.12.2011 22:19, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
> In order to increase focus and unity in the language, we are
> discontinuing support for D1 on December 31, 2012. That's more than one
> year away, which gives enough time to D1 users to migrate libraries and
> applications to D2.

I thought we had moved away from these kinds of unilateral decisions.
I strongly oppose this decision. In particlar, I find the lack of community consulatation deplorable.

On 12/13/11 7:52 AM, Don wrote:
> On 10.12.2011 22:19, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
>> In order to increase focus and unity in the language, we are
>> discontinuing support for D1 on December 31, 2012. That's more than one
>> year away, which gives enough time to D1 users to migrate libraries and
>> applications to D2.
>
> I thought we had moved away from these kinds of unilateral decisions.
> I strongly oppose this decision. In particlar, I find the lack of
> community consulatation deplorable.

Apologies for this being so sudden. This was deliberate as there would have been no way to achieve consensus in the matter. People prefer having choices and postponement options, and are generous with others' time.

Allow me to recap the reasons why I think this is a necessary move.

1. We can't serve two masters. Working on two languages at the same time was non-committal and artificially sustained a rift in the community. It also diffused our focus, delayed us to an ever-increasing extent, and sent the wrong message out that we're lacking confidence of what our core thrust is, so we're trying to sort of please everyone. ("Here's our flagship language! If you don't like it, well, we have another one.")

2. The deadline is more than a year away. This is a long time, enough for us to make D2 compelling, and also for interested people to migrate. I much prefer to give a 12-month warning in December than a 6-month warning in June. Most importantly, it _is_ a deadline, which means people (including us) can plan things ahead.

3. Ceasing support does not mean D1 becomes useless on December 31, 2012. There are many companies that use discontinued compilers for their codebase until they find enough reasons to migrate.


Thanks,

Andrei

On 2011-12-13 14:09, Mike James wrote:
> "Jacob Carlborg" <doob@me.com> wrote in message
> news:jc785g$1hpa$2@digitalmars.com...
>> On 2011-12-13 07:26, Jesse Phillips wrote:
>>> On Sun, 11 Dec 2011 22:57:02 +0000, Jesse Phillips wrote:
>>>
>>>> I haven't used D1 for a long time so I can't claim a bad choice here.
>>>
>>> Actually I think I can state an opinion here. The two things that stand
>>> out in my mind are.
>>>
>>> * There has been a statement of supporting D1 while it is in use (or at
>>> least has a decent number of users). Maybe there aren't any, I don't see
>>> replies claiming such.
>>
>> I'm still using D1.
>>
>
> That'll be one then :-)

Yeah, because Andrei has managed to drive away all those who use D1 because of decisions like the one above and without asking the community.

-- 
/Jacob Carlborg