Hello, the vision document of the Founation for the first six months of 2018 is here:

https://wiki.dlang.org/Vision/2018H1

In addition to the expected items, we have a new top-level priority - locking down the language definition. This is in recognition of the fact that we need a precise definition of the language going forward.


Thanks,

Andrei

On Friday, 9 March 2018 at 21:43:53 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
> Hello, the vision document of the Founation for the first six months of 2018 is here:
>
> https://wiki.dlang.org/Vision/2018H1
>
> In addition to the expected items, we have a new top-level priority - locking down the language definition. This is in recognition of the fact that we need a precise definition of the language going forward.
>
>
> Thanks,
>
> Andrei

Very nice, love how concrete this document has become, including listing the members of the core team, especially compared to the vague early vision statements.

One note about @nogc: I've seen complaints about the -vgc reports on reddit, that they're not very useful for mixed @nogc usage, where the GC is used for part of the codebase, not sure if something can be done about that.

On 10/03/2018 10:43 AM, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
> Hello, the vision document of the Founation for the first six months of 2018 is here:
> 
> https://wiki.dlang.org/Vision/2018H1
> 
> In addition to the expected items, we have a new top-level priority - locking down the language definition. This is in recognition of the fact that we need a precise definition of the language going forward.
> 
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> Andrei

I was going to edit the document and argue for it (but procedure has been a bit different this time), shared libraries.

From what I saw in 2017 and pre 2016 too they are the number one implementation issue of D that drives people away. Almost everything else can be worked around.

Now that we have @nogc exceptions, and are going pay-as-you-go for runtime, this is the biggest thing holding us back IMO.

We need clear use cases with example code that works cross-platform.

With D-host, With C-host, merged with host, unmerged to host. Stuff like that.

On Saturday, 10 March 2018 at 00:03:20 UTC, Joakim wrote:
>
> Very nice, love how concrete this document has become, including listing the members of the core team, especially compared to the vague early vision statements.
>
> One note about @nogc: I've seen complaints about the -vgc reports on reddit, that they're not very useful for mixed @nogc usage, where the GC is used for part of the codebase, not sure if something can be done about that.

https://issues.dlang.org/show_bug.cgi?id=18404

On Friday, 9 March 2018 at 21:43:53 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
> Hello, the vision document of the Founation for the first six months of 2018 is here:

nice.

andd that 'langauge specification' is really important too.. or people will drift towards languages that 'are' properly specified.

None of us like to be surprised by what the compiler does. The spec should tell it what to do.

and...just don't implement a 'no hugs' policy, or I'm outta here ;-)

On Friday, 9 March 2018 at 21:43:53 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
> Hello, the vision document of the Founation for the first six months of 2018 is here:
>
> https://wiki.dlang.org/Vision/2018H1
>

According to the State of D Survey, 71% of the respondents don't care about betterC. Why is betterC on the priority list?

On Saturday, 10 March 2018 at 10:05:49 UTC, rumbu wrote:
>
> According to the State of D Survey, 71% of the respondents don't care about betterC. Why is betterC on the priority list?

I believe it's because it's so important for the 29% who care. If you're doing an module for project written in another language and don't want to introduce DRuntime yet, or are compiling to JavaScript for example, --BetterC can be a lot more helpful than killing autodecoding or whatever.

On Saturday, 10 March 2018 at 10:05:49 UTC, rumbu wrote:
> On Friday, 9 March 2018 at 21:43:53 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
>> Hello, the vision document of the Founation for the first six months of 2018 is here:
>>
>> https://wiki.dlang.org/Vision/2018H1
>>
>
> According to the State of D Survey, 71% of the respondents don't care about betterC. Why is betterC on the priority list?

Yeah. Why should D worry about tying itself into C when it can't even interface with itself through DLLs?

On Saturday, 10 March 2018 at 10:47:09 UTC, Dylan Graham wrote:
>
> Yeah. Why should D worry about tying itself into C when it can't even interface with itself through DLLs?

A reasonable point.

But.. in any case.. people work on what they are motivated to work on.

That's really all there is to it.

That's how the open source community works.

Top down, corporate direction, simply does not apply here.

One day you (or some other D programmer) might need betterC - who knows - and it'll be there for you - cause someone else was motivated to do it.

On Saturday, 10 March 2018 at 10:05:49 UTC, rumbu wrote:

>
> According to the State of D Survey, 71% of the respondents don't care about betterC. Why is betterC on the priority list?

1. The vision document was started before the survey and the survey isn't closed, so the survey results don't factor into it yet.

2. The survey results will serve as a set of guidelines for future directions, not as a set of absolute directives. It wasn't a controlled survey and it doesn't reflect the entire D community.

3. Work on BetterC was started a long time ago and isn't going to be abandoned over night.

If something shows up as high priority in the survey, then it makes sense to evaluate its impact and see how we can devote more resources to it going forward. If something shows up as low priority, then we have to take a number of factors into account, (e.g. Is it being worked on already? Are there commercial interests who *do* consider it a priority? Etc.).

In other words, when setting goals post-survey, the results will factor into the decisions, but they won't necessarily be the deciding factor. The survey is a means of getting community input in one place, as opposed to scattered across the forums and reddit comments.