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Everyone in the D community has their own reasons for being here. We each have our own goals and plans, our own likes and dislikes, our own expectations and tolerance levels when those expectations go unmet, and so on.
When any given person's expectations aren't met over a period of time, whatever that period may be, frustration is understandable. But ranting in the forums about how Walter, or anyone involved in furthering D's development, doesn't care about the community is both unwarranted and unproductive. None of us would be here if we didn't care.
Discussions of D's problems and weaknesses, and the pet peeves of different D users, are scattered out across the forums, the community Discord, the IRC channel, Slack, and who knows where. When someone makes a general complaint in the forums, there's a certain amount of surprise and frustration when Walter asks for specific Bugzilla issues or links to past discussions, as if he's expected to have an eidetic memory.
The issues that you encounter in your code and frequently discuss with others in any given communications channel may be at the front of your mind, but that doesn't mean they are at the front of anyone else's mind. I certainly don't remember every complaint I've read about any given D feature. The issues at the front of my mind usually have nothing to do with any of that. I'm totally with Walter when he asks for specific details, or links to past discussions or Bugzilla issues. Otherwise, it's just noise.
So I have a proposal. Let's take a first step to bring some order to the chaos.
I invite every member of the D community to email me at social@dlang.org with your specific gripes about the current state of D and the things you'd like to see in the future (changes, new features, etc). But don't write in general terms. Be specific.
If your code is breaking every release, how is it breaking? If a certain language feature isn't working the way you expect, how do you expect it to work? Which unresolved issues have forced you into annoying workarounds, and what are those workarounds? What missing features would make your life easier? What are some important but unmaintained projects in the ecosystem that need attention?
Any D feature, any D tool or project in the ecosystem, is fair game. The important point here though is please be as detailed and specific as you can. Include any relevant links to Bugzilla issues or past forum discussions. I can always ask for more detail if I need to, but you'll save both of us time if you include it up front.
I will take this information as it comes in and look for commonalities and establish priorities. Over time, this should help me compile a list of actionable items that I can bring to future foundation meetings, and give us a starting point for serious discussions with community members on how we can solve specific issues that aren't so easily solved. And it will give the ecosystem management team a head start once they get off the ground. Moreover, I can post the list somewhere so that everyone can see it, and we'll all have a common point of reference and see the progress being made as issues are resolved.
By doing this, we can work to align the maintainers' goals with those of the community. I can't promise that Walter or anyone else on the team will agree that any given issue should be a priority, but I'm sure we'll identify a number of them. Nor can I promise that we'll be able to resolve any given issue in a reasonable time frame, given our lack of resources, but having them identified and prioritized is an important step toward ultimately resolving them.
I want to remind everyone that we're in this together. I would love it if we had a dedicated team of engineers who could methodically work through task lists. But we don't. Razvan and Dennis are doing a good bit of work beyond their primary job descriptions, like implementing approved DIPs that have been languishing unimplemented, but they don't have infinite time. So at some point, we'll need a few people to step up in one way or another.
But for now, just email me. Everyone in the D community who has the time and ability to post in the forums also has the time and ability to send me an email detailing their complaints. So please, don't be silent. Just redirect all that energy you've put into internet rants, or kept bottled inside as the case may be, into an email telling me all about your pain.
PLEASE NOTE: I won't be looking for your lists in this thread. If it turns into one of those multipage threads, I don't want to have to pick through every post looking for the details. Please email me. Then I can keep everything in one place with nice tags that make it easy for me to reference.
