I realize it's right before the conference, but I'd like to put out a request for Walter and Andrei to spend five minutes during your talks laying out some overarching strategy for how you see D evolving. It could be during the keynotes or leading off the Q&A panel, but I think it's worth laying a broad strategy out there.

Specifically, what uses do you see D being put to for the next five years and how do we make it better in those directions.  For example, in what way you'd like to see D get better as a language for writing apps, or what particular niches you see D as a systems language doing well in first.

For another example, here's what I'd say, ie my strategic vision: the pendulum is about to swing hard back towards the client, towards the billion and a half mobile devices sold each year, and D is ideally positioned with its native efficiency to do well there. However, since it's not the blessed language for any mobile platform, like Kotlin or Swift, it will take much work on libraries to pull that off.

Some caveats: since D is not controlled by a company with W&A as co-CEOs, they cannot obviously order people to follow their vision. However, that should leave you free to really share your unexpurgated thoughts, after all, we're all free to ignore it. ;)

Another is that perhaps D has chosen to evolve tactically as opposed to strategically, carefully picking off wins with a new feature or mode of programming but not following any grand strategy, similar to how Linus Torvalds claims he didn't have any grand vision for linux either. However, a strategic vision can inspire people to work towards that goal, if there is one to be shared.

On Tuesday, 1 May 2018 at 12:26:25 UTC, Joakim wrote:
> I realize it's right before the conference, but I'd like to put out a request for Walter and Andrei to spend five minutes during your talks laying out some overarching strategy for how you see D evolving. It could be during the keynotes or leading off the Q&A panel, but I think it's worth laying a broad strategy out there.

My vision for D is that we'll get to a point where the community develops its own infrastructure to push D forward without the involvement of Andrei, Walter, or the D Foundation. Things like SciPy, RStudio, and the like. Not just a few side projects, but really large projects with many contributors.

On Tuesday, 1 May 2018 at 12:46:04 UTC, bachmeier wrote:
> On Tuesday, 1 May 2018 at 12:26:25 UTC, Joakim wrote:
>> I realize it's right before the conference, but I'd like to put out a request for Walter and Andrei to spend five minutes during your talks laying out some overarching strategy for how you see D evolving. It could be during the keynotes or leading off the Q&A panel, but I think it's worth laying a broad strategy out there.
>
> My vision for D is that we'll get to a point where the community develops its own infrastructure to push D forward without the involvement of Andrei, Walter, or the D Foundation. Things like SciPy, RStudio, and the like. Not just a few side projects, but really large projects with many contributors.

That's been going on for some time now, W&A and the foundation do a minority of the work, albeit very important. Mir is in the vein you seem to want and wasn't driven by them. I think Weka sponsors some work on ldc, at least for themselves.

But I take your point that it'd be good to see more efforts like that. I had hoped the bounties would spur some pooling around particular issues like that, but it hasn't done that well.

On Tuesday, 1 May 2018 at 12:26:25 UTC, Joakim wrote:
> I realize it's right before the conference, but I'd like to put out a request for Walter and Andrei to spend five minutes during your talks laying out some overarching strategy for how you see D evolving. It could be during the keynotes or leading off the Q&A panel, but I think it's worth laying a broad strategy out there.

For D's vision as set by D's core team
check https://wiki.dlang.org/Vision/2018H1

It is very clear, and feel free to read between the lines, on what might be the long term strategy

I think point 1 in the vision is very telling
> 1. Lock down the language definition

On Tuesday, 1 May 2018 at 17:20:54 UTC, Ali wrote:
> On Tuesday, 1 May 2018 at 12:26:25 UTC, Joakim wrote:
>> I realize it's right before the conference, but I'd like to put out a request for Walter and Andrei to spend five minutes during your talks laying out some overarching strategy for how you see D evolving. It could be during the keynotes or leading off the Q&A panel, but I think it's worth laying a broad strategy out there.
>
> For D's vision as set by D's core team
> check https://wiki.dlang.org/Vision/2018H1

In particular, I'd like to hear how the core team weighs:

  * making useful breaking changes vs maintaining backcompat, and

  * adding more features vs more simplification of the language.

> It is very clear, and feel free to read between the lines, on what might be the long term strategy
>
> I think point 1 in the vision is very telling
>> 1. Lock down the language definition

Sorry, I'm not understanding. To me that says the core team values multiple implementations that adhere to the same spec. Does it imply something else?

On Tuesday, 1 May 2018 at 22:20:53 UTC, John Gabriele wrote:
> On Tuesday, 1 May 2018 at 17:20:54 UTC, Ali wrote:
>> It is very clear, and feel free to read between the lines, on what might be the long term strategy
>>
>> I think point 1 in the vision is very telling
>>> 1. Lock down the language definition
>
> Sorry, I'm not understanding. To me that says the core team values multiple implementations that adhere to the same spec. Does it imply something else?

I think it means stop making changes to the language, and all further changes are limited to library-only. (Could be wrong. Hope I'm wrong. But that is the impression I've been getting that Andrei's been pushing for for quite awhile.)

On Tuesday, 1 May 2018 at 17:20:54 UTC, Ali wrote:
> On Tuesday, 1 May 2018 at 12:26:25 UTC, Joakim wrote:
>> I realize it's right before the conference, but I'd like to put out a request for Walter and Andrei to spend five minutes during your talks laying out some overarching strategy for how you see D evolving. It could be during the keynotes or leading off the Q&A panel, but I think it's worth laying a broad strategy out there.
>
> For D's vision as set by D's core team
> check https://wiki.dlang.org/Vision/2018H1
>
> It is very clear, and feel free to read between the lines, on what might be the long term strategy
>
> I think point 1 in the vision is very telling
>> 1. Lock down the language definition

Those are specific technical priorities that hint at a strategy, as you say, but it is better to lay out that strategy itself. Not knocking that vision document, as I called for a concrete document like that for years, but a conference keynote is a good place to lay out a strategy too.

On 05/01/2018 10:27 PM, Joakim wrote:
> 
> Those are specific technical priorities that hint at a strategy, as you say, but it is better to lay out that strategy itself. Not knocking that vision document, as I called for a concrete document like that for years, but a conference keynote is a good place to lay out a strategy too.

I think the "overall strategy" is simply: "Identify the most important things for the core folk to work on, prioritize those things." Really don't think anything beyond that really matters or exists. We're not exactly pitching to VC's here.

On Wednesday, 2 May 2018 at 03:44:37 UTC, Nick Sabalausky (Abscissa) wrote:
> On 05/01/2018 10:27 PM, Joakim wrote:
>> 
>> Those are specific technical priorities that hint at a strategy, as you say, but it is better to lay out that strategy itself. Not knocking that vision document, as I called for a concrete document like that for years, but a conference keynote is a good place to lay out a strategy too.
>
> I think the "overall strategy" is simply: "Identify the most important things for the core folk to work on, prioritize those things." Really don't think anything beyond that really matters or exists. We're not exactly pitching to VC's here.

Yes, but how is it decided what the "most important things" are? There is a strategy at work for any prioritization, even if it's implicit and never even articulated in their own minds. If unarticulated, you can gain a lot by spending time to articulate it, as you may find unwanted contradictions in the way you had been prioritizing.

As for pitching VCs, there's a reason they want to know that vision, to know if that's something worth investing in. Similarly, potential D users and the existing community want to know if there's a vision worth investing their time and money into.

Since D is an open source project, they're always free to ignore the core team's vision and use D in their own way, ie meld their own vision as Linus talks about happened with linux over the years, but it helps to know what the core team's strategy is for many people.

On Tuesday, 1 May 2018 at 22:20:53 UTC, John Gabriele wrote:
> On Tuesday, 1 May 2018 at 17:20:54 UTC, Ali wrote:
>> I think point 1 in the vision is very telling
>>> 1. Lock down the language definition
>
> Sorry, I'm not understanding. To me that says the core team values multiple implementations that adhere to the same spec. Does it imply something else?

In many ways, I agree, with the other comments
the current strategy seem to continue pushing D as a safer more
predictable systems programming language

Lock down the language definition, will help make D more predictable,
and safer to use