Walter, can you make a schedule for development of D?

The silence make me so dysphoric.

Boris Wang wrote:
> Walter, can you make a schedule for development of D?
> 
> The silence make me so dysphoric. 

There isn't a schedule. We just move forward day by day, trying to do the most important things first.

Walter Bright escribió:
> Boris Wang wrote:
>> Walter, can you make a schedule for development of D?
>>
>> The silence make me so dysphoric. 
> 
> There isn't a schedule. We just move forward day by day, trying to do the most important things first.
Be constructive:

1.- Lets go:  move forward month by month or months by months... the need is the key, not the time to solve them (Momo's concept):  Debugger, please.

2.- Time to unify the framework (Ares, Mango, ...)

3.- Time to be prof : lets plann the future.

Just... follow the Mono's road map... I'm sure than a professional work will give productive results... investments... and so on.

Sorry.  I have a really poor english.
Antonio

Seconded.

antonio wrote:
> Walter Bright escribió:
>> Boris Wang wrote:
>>> Walter, can you make a schedule for development of D?
>>>
>>> The silence make me so dysphoric.
>>
>> There isn't a schedule. We just move forward day by day, trying to do the most important things first.
> Be constructive:
> 
> 1.- Lets go:  move forward month by month or months by months... the need is the key, not the time to solve them (Momo's concept):  Debugger, please.
> 
> 2.- Time to unify the framework (Ares, Mango, ...)
> 
> 3.- Time to be prof : lets plann the future.
> 
> Just... follow the Mono's road map... I'm sure than a professional work will give productive results... investments... and so on.
> 
> Sorry.  I have a really poor english.
> Antonio

> Just... follow the Mono's road map...
http://www.mono-project.com/Mono_Project_Roadmap

Hmmmmm ... their Feb, 2006 webpage mentions .Net framework 1.1 being the latest ... that isn't a confidence builder.

OS/2 tried (and failed) to keep up with with Win 3.1x compatibility ... while Win9x and WinNt "cleaned its clock."

Some observations:
* The battle for the desktop has been over since the DotCom bust. Look
at RedHat's long term stock chart. Windows is "out in front ... and
pulling
away" (on the desktop). I write this as a developer with a crushed
os/2 career still relatively fresh in my mind, so please don't
consider me a Redmond toady.

* A prediction: Steven J. will grow tired of computer outflows draining iPod inflows. Who needs another Board of Directors mutiny? Does portability matter?

* Very few people have made any money betting against Bill Gates. (The W.B. being perhaps a notable exception, although that is probably a long story <g>)

A Modest Proposal:
I speculate that one or more of the Very Bright People who participate
on this list (certainly not including me) would happily work for
Digital Mars for significantly less than their current hourly rate.

I further suspect there are Bright wannabe people on this list who would work for Digital Mars for $1.00 per hour. With the right smokin' material, I would even further speculate that "passing the hat" to pay those people might be semi-viable.

D is certainly not a committee effort (A Good Thing), but my impression is that it is mature enough that an obligarchy would be appropriate rather than the current monarchy. I doubt even Nicolas Wirth could invent his third language today, and get all the libraries to be competitive in a reasonable time-frame ...

(much less the nearly all-important gui debugger. Who besides Bright people can get productive with a complicated language without a world class debugger? Certainly not this plodder ... who is less than the Bright-est bulb in the box)

An uninformed opinion: Boost is "out in front"   Is it "pulling away?" Is the window of opportunity half open or half closed?

Lynn Allan wrote:
>> Just... follow the Mono's road map...
> http://www.mono-project.com/Mono_Project_Roadmap
> 
> Hmmmmm ... their Feb, 2006 webpage mentions .Net framework 1.1 being
> the latest ... that isn't a confidence builder.

The .Net 1.1 framework was implemented in Mono 1.0 and released on June 30th, 2004. Their newest branch, Mono 1.2, is in the final stages of release and has Generic types support and "execution system and core class libraries (C# 2.0)." It also includes technology previews for XML 2.0, ASP.NET 2.0, ADO.NET 2.0, and more. The main thing it is behind on is the GUI, but the System.Windows.Forms 1.1 is added in the 1.2 release. In MonoDevelop there is also a GUI designer which works very well from what I've tested. I have to use .NET for work, and while I don't really like most things MS does (lock out competition and more), the .NET library is very nice to work with and mono is keeping up nicely.

That being said, the Mono roadmap was one of the clearest development paths that I've seen, listing every function/class/documentation/etc.
(http://mono.ximian.com/class-status/mono-HEAD-vs-fx-2/index.html) that needed to be implemented and listed the status of each. Not to mention the site is very clean and the documentation is very easy to read (I haven't found Java or D to be as nice). I'd say Mono has a fabulous roadmap that is very inspiring. I could only hope that the D community could come up with something half as good.

Lucas

Lynn Allan escribió:
>> Just... follow the Mono's road map...
> http://www.mono-project.com/Mono_Project_Roadmap
> 
> Hmmmmm ... their Feb, 2006 webpage mentions .Net framework 1.1 being
> the latest ... that isn't a confidence builder.
> 
> OS/2 tried (and failed) to keep up with with Win 3.1x compatibility
> ... while Win9x and WinNt "cleaned its clock."
We don't ned the c# framework or a replication of the library... we need to propouse a "common path"...
> 
> Some observations:
> * The battle for the desktop has been over since the DotCom bust. Look
> at RedHat's long term stock chart. Windows is "out in front ... and
> pulling
> away" (on the desktop). I write this as a developer with a crushed
> os/2 career still relatively fresh in my mind, so please don't
> consider me a Redmond toady.
> 
> * A prediction: Steven J. will grow tired of computer outflows
> draining iPod inflows. Who needs another Board of Directors mutiny?
> Does portability matter?
> 
> * Very few people have made any money betting against Bill Gates. (The
> W.B. being perhaps a notable exception, although that is probably a
> long story <g>)
> 
> A Modest Proposal:
> I speculate that one or more of the Very Bright People who participate
> on this list (certainly not including me) would happily work for
> Digital Mars for significantly less than their current hourly rate.

> 
> I further suspect there are Bright wannabe people on this list who
> would work for Digital Mars for $1.00 per hour. With the right smokin'
> material, I would even further speculate that "passing the hat" to pay
> those people might be semi-viable.
> 

> D is certainly not a committee effort (A Good Thing), but my
> impression is that it is mature enough that an obligarchy would be
> appropriate rather than the current monarchy. I doubt even Nicolas
> Wirth could invent his third language today, and get all the libraries
> to be competitive in a reasonable time-frame ...
> 
> (much less the nearly all-important gui debugger. Who besides Bright
> people can get productive with a complicated language without a world
> class debugger? Certainly not this plodder ... who is less than the
> Bright-est bulb in the box)
> 
> An uninformed opinion: Boost is "out in front"   Is it "pulling away?"
> Is the window of opportunity half open or half closed?
> 
The window is really half open:

I think than development market has a gap not really covered by any other languaje:

* A lot of peopple need's to work with a primary languaje (without virtual machine)... C & C++ (Pascal?) are the key:  When you need to work in a very low level and not really big project... C is the best one.  If you need a best structured possibility:  C++ is a good option (with a hard learn curve... you need only a good project director, very clean development rules and a good quality verification fase for each development fase).  When you need a fast structured hight level development... then Java/C# is a good option (You need the same C++ project development rules, but you have a good isolation/independent facilities and a good learn curve)

* D is just between C++ & Java/C#: Not Virtual machine, hight abstraction level, good learn curve and, here you are the key, D flavour and Name:  a C# alternative focused as a C++/C evolution.

D only needs a good infraestructure to cover the gap:
	Best library support.
	A complete debugger (future ide is optional)
	Documentation.

Your proposal is clean and acceptable:  a "proto" company with a good team producing a core profesional product. Money could be provided by us (the community) and the objective could be provided by the own company.

My propossal:

	1.- Create the core team with the best ones.
	2.- The team has to prepare the future D roadmap.
	3.- With the roadmap, people can decide if D future covers their needs or if D must be abandoned.
	4.- Let's go with the company.
	

The market oportunity is waiting for "D"...

>..."Debugger, please."

Not even a debugger, only debugging info from the compiler.

I've stated earlier how I miss good debugging support. (I don't even want to
start on why unit testing, while it is great and powerful, isn't enough.)
Even I've tried to support a D debugging/debugger project, until it came clear
that the executables doesn't contain needed debug info (only source numbers and
some basic stuff).
And since the compiler is in Walter's hand, and backend is closed, there is no
other way to include debug info, only if he works on it.

I've never worked with compiler technology, and only scratched the surface with debugging information in debug executables, I wonder what it takes to be able to read/watch (all) D variables.

After that, to incorporate debugging into any tool/IDE seem a lesser problem to me.

Unfortunately, I've never heard Walter on this topic, is this task a hard one,
or where the problem lies (I've heard codeview isn't a nice format, and the new
MS "pdb" format is kind of MS internal), or is there a way to contribute to
this..., is it planned after all ...
only different deflective opinions form the D community.

(And frankly, this is the one technical thing that keeps me from working with D
(again), and only dare to raise the question again, because I see similar
opinions.)

Lucas Goss wrote:


> That being said, the Mono roadmap was one of the clearest development paths that I've seen, listing every function/class/documentation/etc. (http://mono.ximian.com/class-status/mono-HEAD-vs-fx-2/index.html) that needed to be implemented and listed the status of each. Not to mention the site is very clean and the documentation is very easy to read (I haven't found Java or D to be as nice). I'd say Mono has a fabulous roadmap that is very inspiring. I could only hope that the D community could come up with something half as good.
> 
> Lucas

It is easy to make a detailed roadmap when you just reimplement an existing API.

--
Lars Ivar Igesund
blog at http://larsivi.net
DSource & #D: larsivi

Lars Ivar Igesund wrote:
> It is easy to make a detailed roadmap when you just reimplement an existing
> API.

Ah, I probably should have left out the API link (for functions/etc.), my mistake. Yes an API would make that easier. They still have a roadmap for all of their projects though, which includes much more than just the API from .NET.

It's just easier for a community to go the same direction if they have a target to aim at.

Lucas