On 2/26/13 4:23 PM, foobar wrote:
I don't get what fault you find in the binary NOT operation.
Regardless, my post wasn't really about specific features, (Walter
actually mentioned those) but rather about the general design philosophy
of D which I find lacking. Yes, it is obviously true that Rust has it
own share of faults, The difference is what *principals* they use to
address those faults and evolve the language.
Rust is written in Rust, thus the developers themselves feel all the
shortcomings, they also listen to their users and they strive to find
the best way to express the semantics they want in the possibly simplest
yet readable syntax possible. They think positive and build on their
vision, whereas D thinks negatively based on C++'s vision.
D exists for more than a decade and all it provides is slightly less
hackish C++.
At first, I dismissed Rust for having poor syntax ("ret" really? Are we
back to assembly?) but lo and behold, in a very short time they
considerably improved the syntax. D still argues about the exact same
issues from several years ago, as if it's stuck in a time loop. This to
me shows a lack of direction. I expected thing to improve lately with
all those newly minted release process discussions and such, but alas
the attitude hasn't shifted at all.
I understand how you see it, and honestly could see it from a mile. When
a post (a) cherry-picks all negatives and (b) has a final tone that
mentions no possible solution - it's a foregone conclusion that no
amount of explaining, amending, arguing, etc. will improve the poster's
outlook.
I could say e.g. "Well I think things have changed, and look we've
turned the bug trend curve (http://goo.gl/kf4ZC) which is unprecedented,
fixed some incomplete features, break new records on bug fixes with each
release, and have a big conference coming." - to which I have no doubt
it's possible to concoct a negative answer.
So I understand you have a negative outlook on D. That's entirely fine,
as is mentioning it on the forum. The only thing I'd like you to
understand and appreciate is that we who work on D are doing our best to
find solutions to the various problems in front of us, and in quite a
literal sense we don't know how to do any better. The constructive thing
I'm getting out of this is that we could use some more radicalization -
try things that push stronger against our comfort zone. I have a few in
mind but it's too early to discuss them publicly.
Andrei
