With four or five people having voiced concerns over the future of D in the past week or so, what's the busiest discussion?

int.nan, of course.

Come on.  Get with the program.  Enough already with the bikeshed bullshit.  There are far more important issues at hand.

== Quote from Jarrett Billingsley (jarrett.billingsley@gmail.com)'s article
> With four or five people having voiced concerns over the future of D
> in the past week or so, what's the busiest discussion?
> int.nan, of course.
> Come on.  Get with the program.  Enough already with the bikeshed
> bullshit.  There are far more important issues at hand.

Yeah, but a lot of the other discussions have been about toolchain issues, marketing, installers, etc., not the language per se.  To me, the main priorities right now should be to get the language spec finalized and to get a usable (not necessarily perfect) reference implementation working.

The importance of finishing up the spec is obvious.  The reference implementation is important for the following reasons:

1.  Let's face it, it's extremely difficult to identify corner cases in the spec that need to be clarified until you've actually tried to use the language. Despite what language lawyers and type A personalities like to think, the reference implementation of any language serves as a de facto spec and co-evolves with the spec at least initially.

2.  Without a decent reference implemenation, D would only exist on paper and look like a vaporware castle in the air language.

3.  If a feature isn't implemented in a reasonably bug-free manner (or at all), it's hard for the community to understand it, use it and give feedback on how it can be improved.

I feel that miscellaneous toolchain issues (other than implementing changes to the spec and fixing bugs that severely affect the usability of language features) are an order of magnitude less important because this stuff can always be done after the fact without breaking code.  In other words, once the spec is finalized and a decent reference implementation is out the door, people can confidently use D2 knowing that the situation will only get better.  Until then, it's two steps forward, one step back when code breaks in non-trivial ways due to a spec change or a compiler bug makes a seemingly useful feature that you planned on using absolutely useless.

Jarrett Billingsley Wrote:

> With four or five people having voiced concerns over the future of D in the past week or so, what's the busiest discussion?
> 
> int.nan, of course.
> 
> Come on.  Get with the program.  Enough already with the bikeshed bullshit.  There are far more important issues at hand.

yeah he pulled a bearophile. u'd think u'd get used 2 it. shit. i'm bracin' fer 'nother post tellin' how putr is better than writeln.

"Jarrett Billingsley" <jarrett.billingsley@gmail.com> wrote in message news:mailman.316.1246228005.13405.digitalmars-d@puremagic.com...
> With four or five people having voiced concerns over the future of D in the past week or so, what's the busiest discussion?
>
> int.nan, of course.
>
> Come on.  Get with the program.  Enough already with the bikeshed bullshit.  There are far more important issues at hand.

Oh, please, if int.nan is a bikeshed discussion, then what would we call complaining *about* that discussion? Some of us find it an interesting discussion. So we talk about it. Big f&**^ deal.

On Mon, Jun 29, 2009 at 12:37 AM, superdan<super@dan.org> wrote:
> Jarrett Billingsley Wrote:
>
>> With four or five people having voiced concerns over the future of D in the past week or so, what's the busiest discussion?
>>
>> int.nan, of course.
>>
>> Come on.  Get with the program.  Enough already with the bikeshed bullshit.  There are far more important issues at hand.
>
> yeah he pulled a bearophile. u'd think u'd get used 2 it. shit. i'm bracin' fer 'nother post tellin' how putr is better than writeln.
>

But Dan, putr *is* better than writeln!  It's 3 characters shorter, and that somehow causes your code to be less buggy.  Or something.  :P

"Nick Sabalausky" <a@a.a> wrote in message news:h29gil$6u3$1@digitalmars.com...
> "Jarrett Billingsley" <jarrett.billingsley@gmail.com> wrote in message news:mailman.316.1246228005.13405.digitalmars-d@puremagic.com...
>> With four or five people having voiced concerns over the future of D in the past week or so, what's the busiest discussion?
>>
>> int.nan, of course.
>>
>> Come on.  Get with the program.  Enough already with the bikeshed bullshit.  There are far more important issues at hand.
>
> Oh, please, if int.nan is a bikeshed discussion, then what would we call complaining *about* that discussion? Some of us find it an interesting discussion. So we talk about it. Big f&**^ deal.

And if we really need more "future of D" discussion, here's one: How's D going to look to newcomers if the forums have topic-of-discussion-police that go around complaining "We shouldn't be talking about this!" "This isn't a worthy debate!" "But, this'll never actually happen, so why mention it?!" I've been down this road before (man, how I've been down it...). Next thing that happens is more people come in on each side of this endless rabbit hole that is meta-discussion, real debate slows down (both hypothetical and practical), tempers flare, people leave, and the whole group degenerates into a paralyzed staticy dysfunctional madness. It's a sad, sad thing. Yea, sure, that sounds like a classic "slippery slope" fallacy, but damn if I haven't seen it happen time and time again. Let's not go there.

Jarrett Billingsley wrote:
> With four or five people having voiced concerns over the future of D
> in the past week or so, what's the busiest discussion?
> 
> int.nan, of course.
> 
> Come on.  Get with the program.  Enough already with the bikeshed
> bullshit.  There are far more important issues at hand.

if you do not want to discuss a particular topic than by all means do not participate in it.
do not tell other people what to think and what to write. this is not china and you are not the great firewall.
grow up.

if you want a moderated NG than ask Walter to create one. This is *not* such a NG and people *will* discuss whatever they want, whether you like it or not.

Yigal Chripun wrote:
> do not tell other people what to think and what to write. this is not
> china and you are not the great firewall.
> grow up.

Apparently you don't share Jarrett's consciousness of the problem
that more important issues are left undiscussed.
Freedom may be paramount, but I'm not sure if D's situation would
improve just by letting people write what they want to.

I don't have a clearcut answer.  Perhaps there should be some kind of soft leadership or orientation?

(Reminds me of Guido van Rossum jokingly calling himself a kind of dictator.  And his Python is a successful language.)

On Mon, 29 Jun 2009 09:21:29 +0300, Yigal Chripun wrote:

> Jarrett Billingsley wrote:
>> With four or five people having voiced concerns over the future of D in the past week or so, what's the busiest discussion?
>> 
>> int.nan, of course.
>> 
>> Come on.  Get with the program.  Enough already with the bikeshed bullshit.  There are far more important issues at hand.
> 
> if you do not want to discuss a particular topic than by all means do
> not participate in it.
> do not tell other people what to think and what to write. this is not
> china and you are not the great firewall.
> grow up.
> 
> if you want a moderated NG than ask Walter to create one. This is *not* such a NG and people *will* discuss whatever they want, whether you like it or not.

I agree with both of you.

-- 
Derek Parnell
Melbourne, Australia
skype: derek.j.parnell

Nick Sabalausky Wrote:

> "Nick Sabalausky" <a@a.a> wrote in message news:h29gil$6u3$1@digitalmars.com...
> > "Jarrett Billingsley" <jarrett.billingsley@gmail.com> wrote in message news:mailman.316.1246228005.13405.digitalmars-d@puremagic.com...
> >> With four or five people having voiced concerns over the future of D in the past week or so, what's the busiest discussion?
> >>
> >> int.nan, of course.
> >>
> >> Come on.  Get with the program.  Enough already with the bikeshed bullshit.  There are far more important issues at hand.
> >
> > Oh, please, if int.nan is a bikeshed discussion, then what would we call complaining *about* that discussion? Some of us find it an interesting discussion. So we talk about it. Big f&**^ deal.
> 
> And if we really need more "future of D" discussion, here's one: How's D going to look to newcomers if the forums have topic-of-discussion-police that go around complaining "We shouldn't be talking about this!" "This isn't a worthy debate!" "But, this'll never actually happen, so why mention it?!" I've been down this road before (man, how I've been down it...). Next thing that happens is more people come in on each side of this endless rabbit hole that is meta-discussion, real debate slows down (both hypothetical and practical), tempers flare, people leave, and the whole group degenerates into a paralyzed staticy dysfunctional madness. It's a sad, sad thing. Yea, sure, that sounds like a classic "slippery slope" fallacy, but damn if I haven't seen it happen time and time again. Let's not go there.

u got me wrong d00d. problem's not topic police. problem's topic bullshit. making int min int nan iz bullshit. d is systems language. int nan requires tests inserted all over. otherwise it's useless. some ops would return int nan. question is: wut does a newcummer think seein' shitty ideaz all over dis group.