On Tue, May 31, 2022 at 12:31:48AM +0000, zjh via Digitalmars-d wrote:
> On Monday, 30 May 2022 at 21:08:20 UTC, H. S. Teoh wrote:
> 
> > IOW, decide which edge of the forest we want to end up on in the first place, before we engage our engineering genius to tackle individual trees! :-D
[...]
> In the words of our Chinese people,that , have not open the `big picture`?
> Indeed, we cannot indulge in details .
> We need macro thinking!
> For example, who are our `target users`? What are we after?
> I think since we have more than `four compilers` , let's serve for
> `compiler programmers` .
> This is a direction. We can try to explore `here` first, right? After
> all, `D` teams are professional in the compiler domain.

Details are definitely needed -- eventually. I don't agree that we can just care for the "big picture" and neglect the details.  But neither can we have details without the big picture: that also gets us nowhere. The details must be guided by the big picture, so until the big picture becomes clear, worrying about the details won't get us very far.

More pertinently, the "forest" in deadalnix's post is: what approach do we want to take in terms of memory management?  We can either embrace the GC and take steps to make things better (add dataflow analysis to eliminate unnecessary allocations, etc.), or we can decide we want Rust-style ownership tracking.  Or if we're insanely ambitious, both (but that would require an overarching *detailed* design with the necessary language theory / type theory foundations, to ensure that we aren't gonna end up with a dud).

But taking things "one step at a time" is clearly not working right now. You need an overall direction first, then "one step at a time" would get you there eventually. But "one step at a time" without any overall plan means we'll end up walking in circles and getting nowhere.


T

-- 
They say that "guns don't kill people, people kill people." Well I think the gun helps. If you just stood there and yelled BANG, I don't think you'd kill too many people. -- Eddie Izzard, Dressed to Kill