On Wednesday, February 28, 2018 19:31:27 Cym13 via Digitalmars-d-announce wrote:
> - some questions introduce clear bias as they don't have a clear default exit path.

Similarly, some of them seem to make the assumption that a problem makes it so that you don't want to use D (e.g. it talks about features discouraging you from using D), which personally, I never find to be the case. There are features that I get annoyed with for various reasons, but they don't discourage me from using D. They just make it harder and/or less pleasant.

Assuming that I have free reign to pick which language I'm going to use, about the only thing that's going to make it so that I don't use D is if I really can't do it in D in a reasonable time frame, whereas I can in another language, and that's pretty much only going to be because I need a library that simply isn't available from D and would be too time-consuming to make available from D - especially if I'm in a hurry. No feature of D is going to make me not want to use D.

- Jonathan M Davis

On Wednesday, February 28, 2018 22:02:21 Manu via Digitalmars-d-announce wrote:
> On 28 February 2018 at 05:41, Mike Parker via Digitalmars-d-announce
>
> <digitalmars-d-announce@puremagic.com> wrote:
> > About a month ago, Sebastian Wilzbach sent an email out to a few of the core D folks asking for feedback on a survey he had put together. He thought it would be useful for the Foundation to use in order to make decisions about where to expend development efforts. Eventually Andrei gave his stamp of approval, the survey questions were tweaked, and then it was ready to roll.
> >
> > Of course I would love for you to read my blog post announcing it, but
> > if
> > you want to skip the prose and go straight to the good stuff, here's the
> > survey link:
> >
> > https://seb134.typeform.com/to/H1GTak
> >
> > The blog: https://dlang.org/blog/2018/02/28/the-state-of-d-2018-survey/
> >
> > Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/d_language/comments/80w29n/the_state_of_d_2018_ survey/
> WTF spaces!!! O_O

Don't you mean "WTF tabs!!!"? ;)

- Jonathan M Davis

On Thu, Mar 01, 2018 at 12:07:16AM -0700, Jonathan M Davis via Digitalmars-d-announce wrote: [...]
> > WTF spaces!!! O_O
> 
> Don't you mean "WTF tabs!!!"? ;)

Meh. :-D


T

-- 
Making non-nullable pointers is just plugging one hole in a cheese grater. -- Walter Bright

On 28 February 2018 at 23:07, Jonathan M Davis via Digitalmars-d-announce <digitalmars-d-announce@puremagic.com> wrote:
> On Wednesday, February 28, 2018 22:02:21 Manu via Digitalmars-d-announce wrote:
>> On 28 February 2018 at 05:41, Mike Parker via Digitalmars-d-announce
>>
>> <digitalmars-d-announce@puremagic.com> wrote:
>> > About a month ago, Sebastian Wilzbach sent an email out to a few of the core D folks asking for feedback on a survey he had put together. He thought it would be useful for the Foundation to use in order to make decisions about where to expend development efforts. Eventually Andrei gave his stamp of approval, the survey questions were tweaked, and then it was ready to roll.
>> >
>> > Of course I would love for you to read my blog post announcing it, but
>> > if
>> > you want to skip the prose and go straight to the good stuff, here's the
>> > survey link:
>> >
>> > https://seb134.typeform.com/to/H1GTak
>> >
>> > The blog: https://dlang.org/blog/2018/02/28/the-state-of-d-2018-survey/
>> >
>> > Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/d_language/comments/80w29n/the_state_of_d_2018_ survey/
>> WTF spaces!!! O_O
>
> Don't you mean "WTF tabs!!!"? ;)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HIWHMb3JxmE

On Wed, 2018-02-28 at 13:41 +0000, Mike Parker via Digitalmars-d- announce wrote:
> About a month ago, Sebastian Wilzbach sent an email out to a few of the core D folks asking for feedback on a survey he had put together. He thought it would be useful for the Foundation to use in order to make decisions about where to expend development efforts. Eventually Andrei gave his stamp of approval, the survey questions were tweaked, and then it was ready to roll.
> 
> Of course I would love for you to read my blog post announcing it, but if you want to skip the prose and go straight to the good stuff, here's the survey link:
> 
> https://seb134.typeform.com/to/H1GTak
> 

All the 1 to 5 scale questions have the label a over each of the five options so it is not entirely obvious what to choose.

Firefox 58.0.1 on Debian Sid.

-- 
Russel.
==========================================
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41 Buckmaster Road    m: +44 7770 465 077
London SW11 1EN, UK   w: www.russel.org.uk

On Wednesday, 28 February 2018 at 20:37:36 UTC, Seb wrote:
> On Wednesday, 28 February 2018 at 20:24:00 UTC, JN wrote:
>> On Wednesday, 28 February 2018 at 20:01:16 UTC, Seb wrote:
>>> Thanks! I hope so too!
>>
>> Is there some way to access the results without retaking the survey?
>
> Yeah the link TypeForm generates at the end is permanent:
>
> https://dlang.typeform.com/report/H1GTak/PY9NhHkcBFG0t6ig
>
> though for some reason it doesn't show full-text answers (I have opened a support ticket for that a while ago).
> Anyhow, as Mike said we will look at all answers and do a summary once the survey concluded.

Interesting results. 80% in favor for breaking changes.

Maybe it's time to not care too much about making D better and leave old legacy stuff that stops D from evolving behind curtains.

Just don't overlook the fact that people who fill out 30 minute surveys
right away after being told about them are a self-selected group of people
who apparently have way too much time on their hands.
Which also suggests they would likely also have more free time to go chase
down and fix breaks in their legacy code caused by new compilers.

--bb


On Thu, Mar 1, 2018 at 1:19 PM, bauss via Digitalmars-d-announce < digitalmars-d-announce@puremagic.com> wrote:

> On Wednesday, 28 February 2018 at 20:37:36 UTC, Seb wrote:
>
>> On Wednesday, 28 February 2018 at 20:24:00 UTC, JN wrote:
>>
>>> On Wednesday, 28 February 2018 at 20:01:16 UTC, Seb wrote:
>>>
>>>> Thanks! I hope so too!
>>>>
>>>
>>> Is there some way to access the results without retaking the survey?
>>>
>>
>> Yeah the link TypeForm generates at the end is permanent:
>>
>> https://dlang.typeform.com/report/H1GTak/PY9NhHkcBFG0t6ig
>>
>> though for some reason it doesn't show full-text answers (I have opened a
>> support ticket for that a while ago).
>> Anyhow, as Mike said we will look at all answers and do a summary once
>> the survey concluded.
>>
>
> Interesting results. 80% in favor for breaking changes.
>
> Maybe it's time to not care too much about making D better and leave old legacy stuff that stops D from evolving behind curtains.
>

On Thursday, 1 March 2018 at 21:24:29 UTC, Bill Baxter wrote:
> Just don't overlook the fact that people who fill out 30 minute surveys
> right away after being told about them are a self-selected group of people
> who apparently have way too much time on their hands.
> Which also suggests they would likely also have more free time to go chase
> down and fix breaks in their legacy code caused by new compilers.
>
> --bb

Nothing makes the old compilers disappear. If you have working code, keep using the compiler that compiled it. New features or breaking changes. Otherwise D will stop evolving, and unlike C++, will not have tons of legacy code to force people to continue to use it.

Ok, I have same feeling, but after trying to fill this survey with one of my colleague, I have find out that it takes "only" 15 minutes to complete. But still I thing almost everyone from our field is OK with filling surveys anyway.

On Thu, Mar 1, 2018 at 10:24 PM, Bill Baxter via Digitalmars-d-announce < digitalmars-d-announce@puremagic.com> wrote:

> Just don't overlook the fact that people who fill out 30 minute surveys
> right away after being told about them are a self-selected group of people
> who apparently have way too much time on their hands.
> Which also suggests they would likely also have more free time to go chase
> down and fix breaks in their legacy code caused by new compilers.
>
> --bb
>
>
> On Thu, Mar 1, 2018 at 1:19 PM, bauss via Digitalmars-d-announce < digitalmars-d-announce@puremagic.com> wrote:
>
>> On Wednesday, 28 February 2018 at 20:37:36 UTC, Seb wrote:
>>
>>> On Wednesday, 28 February 2018 at 20:24:00 UTC, JN wrote:
>>>
>>>> On Wednesday, 28 February 2018 at 20:01:16 UTC, Seb wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> Thanks! I hope so too!
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Is there some way to access the results without retaking the survey?
>>>>
>>>
>>> Yeah the link TypeForm generates at the end is permanent:
>>>
>>> https://dlang.typeform.com/report/H1GTak/PY9NhHkcBFG0t6ig
>>>
>>> though for some reason it doesn't show full-text answers (I have opened
>>> a support ticket for that a while ago).
>>> Anyhow, as Mike said we will look at all answers and do a summary once
>>> the survey concluded.
>>>
>>
>> Interesting results. 80% in favor for breaking changes.
>>
>> Maybe it's time to not care too much about making D better and leave old legacy stuff that stops D from evolving behind curtains.
>>
>
>

On Thursday, March 01, 2018 13:24:29 Bill Baxter via Digitalmars-d-announce wrote:
> Just don't overlook the fact that people who fill out 30 minute surveys
> right away after being told about them are a self-selected group of people
> who apparently have way too much time on their hands.
> Which also suggests they would likely also have more free time to go chase
> down and fix breaks in their legacy code caused by new compilers.

It's also the case that the folks who even see this survey are likely to be a fairly small percentage of the actual user base. So, while its results may be useful, they need to be viewed with that fact in mind.

That being said, I think that it's a given that we need to make breaking changes at least occasionally. The question is more how big they can be and how we go about it. Some changes would clearly be far too large to be worth it, whereas others clearly pay for themselves. The harder question is the stuff in between.

For instance, while we might not actually have a new operator if D were being redesigned from the ground up (Andrei has previously stated that it really should have just been a function in the standard library or runtime), that would be far too large a change with far too little benefit to be even vaguely worth it at this point. On the other hand, we _did_ change it so that switch statements don't have implicit fallthrough anymore, and that change was _very_ well received, because it caught bugs and it was a quick fix to update correct code that was then an error (it was probably also true that relatively little correct code had to be updated, but that's harder to measure).

Each potential breaking change has to be weighed on its own, and the real question is how strongly we weight the pros vs the cons. We could choose to favor breaking code only when it's cleary _very_ benificial to do so, or we could choose to break code any time there's even a slight benefit to it. I think that it's pretty clear that the right choice is somewhere in between those two extremes, but it's not an easy question as to where it is.

And as has been discussed before, we have folks clamoring for breaking changes and folks clamoring for nothing to ever break, and sometimes, they're exactly the same folks. :|

- Jonathan M Davis