On Thursday, 23 August 2018 at 17:02:12 UTC, Shachar Shemesh wrote:

> If you can, feel free to contact me off-list, and I'm fairly sure we can get the budget for you to work on it. The same goes for anyone else on this list.

I don't think Kenji will see your message, but he may be able to help given the right financial incentive.

On 23/08/18 19:58, RhyS wrote:
> 
> A quick question, if Weka did not have the current 300k backlog of code, what language of choice is more likely to be picked by the team at Weka?

I don't know. Like I said, while the feeling that D has completely lost its way is fairly universal, the claim that picking D was a mistake is not. There are some unique D features we are using to great effect, and people have gone used to the weaknesses.

I don't think, at this point, picking a different direction would have happened even if it were technically feasible.

Shachar

On 23/08/18 20:52, bachmeier wrote:
> On Thursday, 23 August 2018 at 17:19:41 UTC, Ali wrote:
>> On Thursday, 23 August 2018 at 16:22:54 UTC, Shachar Shemesh wrote:
>>> On 23/08/18 17:01, Steven Schveighoffer wrote:
>>> My main job is to develop for Weka, not develop D itself.
>>
>> Weka, at some point, made the strategic decision to use a non mainstream language
>>
>> I dont think Weka, have a choice, they have to invest in the development of D itself
> 
> I hope a startup can choose D without having to do that. Otherwise D is not really a viable option for startups because they need to focus on survival rather than language development.

This!

Maybe Weka can afford it, but being all smug about it is a destructive attitude to have. I know that some of Weka's leadership are uncomfortable about the fact that we, almost by definition, are facing language related issues that no-one in the community has before us.

Weka is in a good place, and is going in a good direction, but don't forget that we are up against giants, and are selling a product where 0.1% failure is considered the same as utter failure. Being able to trust the compiler was supposed to be a given.

Yes, Weka is, at this point, committed. The next start-up isn't.

Shachar

On 23/08/18 20:57, bachmeier wrote:
> On Thursday, 23 August 2018 at 17:02:12 UTC, Shachar Shemesh wrote:
> 
>> If you can, feel free to contact me off-list, and I'm fairly sure we can get the budget for you to work on it. The same goes for anyone else on this list.
> 
> I don't think Kenji will see your message, but he may be able to help given the right financial incentive.

I have no idea who that is. Can you contact me off-list (either email or the DLang slack)?

Shachar

On Thursday, August 23, 2018 12:05:53 PM MDT Shachar Shemesh via Digitalmars-d wrote:
> On 23/08/18 20:57, bachmeier wrote:
> > On Thursday, 23 August 2018 at 17:02:12 UTC, Shachar Shemesh wrote:
> >> If you can, feel free to contact me off-list, and I'm fairly sure we can get the budget for you to work on it. The same goes for anyone else on this list.
> >
> > I don't think Kenji will see your message, but he may be able to help given the right financial incentive.
>
> I have no idea who that is. Can you contact me off-list (either email or
> the DLang slack)?

He's talking about Kenji Hara, who was an extremely prolific developer for dmd and Phobos for several years but who left a couple of years ago after he was unhappy with some of what was happening with his PRs for dmd. AFAIK, he's completely disappeared from the general D community (though he may be involved with the Japanese D community, since they kind of have their own thing going as I understand it). I have no clue if he'd be willing to do anything to help you or not, but this is his github account:

https://github.com/9rnsr

- Jonathan M Davis

On Thursday, 23 August 2018 at 17:52:54 UTC, bachmeier wrote:
> On Thursday, 23 August 2018 at 17:19:41 UTC, Ali wrote:
>> On Thursday, 23 August 2018 at 16:22:54 UTC, Shachar Shemesh wrote:
>>> On 23/08/18 17:01, Steven Schveighoffer wrote:
>>> My main job is to develop for Weka, not develop D itself.
>>
>> Weka, at some point, made the strategic decision to use a non mainstream language
>>
>> I dont think Weka, have a choice, they have to invest in the development of D itself
>
> I hope a startup can choose D without having to do that. Otherwise D is not really a viable option for startups because they need to focus on survival rather than language development.

What a joke: are you really arguing that every startup should have all their suppliers give them everything for free? Most startups pay a ton of money for their critical tools, money that pays for further development of those tools, including for bugfixes and features in the OSS projects they use (which they don't always open source). I'd wager that whatever Weka has spent on Johan to fix D is much less. Maybe Weka is simply learning they can't get away with that anymore.

What you _could_ argue is that the cost/benefit ratio of D ends up being too high compared to some mooted alternative with a bigger community, say C++ or Rust, but I think you'd have a tough time making that case.

On Thu, Aug 23, 2018 at 09:05:53PM +0300, Shachar Shemesh via Digitalmars-d wrote:
> On 23/08/18 20:57, bachmeier wrote:
> > On Thursday, 23 August 2018 at 17:02:12 UTC, Shachar Shemesh wrote:
> > 
> > > If you can, feel free to contact me off-list, and I'm fairly sure we can get the budget for you to work on it. The same goes for anyone else on this list.
> > 
> > I don't think Kenji will see your message, but he may be able to help given the right financial incentive.
> 
> I have no idea who that is. Can you contact me off-list (either email
> or the DLang slack)?
[...]

He used to be one of the core dmd developers, and easily the most prolific and productive.  Unfortunately, he left about 2 or so years ago after a sharp disagreement with some other dmd devs.


T

-- 
IBM = I'll Buy Microsoft!

On Thursday, 23 August 2018 at 18:05:53 UTC, Shachar Shemesh wrote:
> On 23/08/18 20:57, bachmeier wrote:
>> On Thursday, 23 August 2018 at 17:02:12 UTC, Shachar Shemesh wrote:
>> 
>>> If you can, feel free to contact me off-list, and I'm fairly sure we can get the budget for you to work on it. The same goes for anyone else on this list.
>> 
>> I don't think Kenji will see your message, but he may be able to help given the right financial incentive.
>
> I have no idea who that is. Can you contact me off-list (either email or the DLang slack)?
>
> Shachar

Others probably have better information than I do. Here's his Github account: https://github.com/9rnsr

All I really know is that he was a prolific and brilliant contributor to the compiler when I started using D. Pretty much Walter and him as I understood it. Then he had a disagreement with the leadership and disappeared.

On Thursday, 23 August 2018 at 09:51:43 UTC, rikki cattermole wrote:
>> Good luck getting W&A to agree to it, especially when there is yet another "critical D opportunity" on the table ;)
>
> No. They have power for as long as we the community say that they do.
> We are at the point where they need a check and balance to keep everybody going smoothly. And I do hope that they listen to us before somebody decides its forkin' time.

No fork of D can be successful, it won't have the manpower, skills or willpower to draw on. Even with W and A it's already short.

'Threatening' W and A with a fork is an empty threat that just p***es them off. Bad move on your part.

On 8/23/18 12:27 PM, Shachar Shemesh wrote:
> On 23/08/18 17:01, Steven Schveighoffer wrote:
>> So interestingly, you are accepting the sockaddr by VALUE.
> 
> Indeed. The reason is that I cannot accept them by reference, as then you wouldn't be able to pass lvalues* in. Another controversial decision by D.

*rvalues you meant.

One that is actively being addressed, at least by the community: https://github.com/dlang/DIPs/blob/master/DIPs/DIP1016.md

No guarantees it gets through, but this is probably further than anyone has ever gotten before on this topic (and it's a very old topic).

> 
> Had that been C++, I'd definitely get a const ref instead.

If you want to use inheritance this is a given, in D or in C++.

What this simply means is your identification of the problem is simply wrong -- it's not that you can't make subtypes with structs (you can), it's that you can't accept rvalues by reference, and accepting by reference is required for inheritance.

-Steve