On Wednesday, 22 May 2013 at 13:44:10 UTC, Dicebot wrote:
> Eh, official definition of "breaking change" keeps breaking my heart. But I guess this is a mindset set in stone now and changing it is close to impossible.

Can you elaborate a little bit?

I felt personally that what the discussion didn't really address was that these days the "breaking" problems are primarily not with the language, but with the standard library, and this is not much less problematic.  Yes, it was mentioned, but not really considered in detail, and that's where a significant amount of attention needs to be.

You can extend this to spec -- whereas D as a language is substantially well defined, the standard library doesn't seem to be, and there are clearly areas where this needs to be addressed.  Just as one example, which strongly affects my own use of and engagement with D: the de facto behaviour of random number generators, which are implemented as value types despite there being strong reasons why they should instead be reference types.

I understand that resolving the last major language spec issues probably needs to be first priority, but I don't think this is the major _usability_ issue any more.

On Thursday, 23 May 2013 at 12:18:14 UTC, Joseph Rushton Wakeling wrote:
> On Wednesday, 22 May 2013 at 13:44:10 UTC, Dicebot wrote:
>> Eh, official definition of "breaking change" keeps breaking my heart. But I guess this is a mindset set in stone now and changing it is close to impossible.
>
> Can you elaborate a little bit?

Please have a look at yet another thread on topic that has escalated just recently :) http://forum.dlang.org/post/mailman.1479.1369170696.4724.digitalmars-d@puremagic.com

Also you can read last dmd-beta mail list for _language_ related breaking examples.