On Friday 17 September 2010 19:20:20 Nick B wrote: > On 18/09/2010 12:28 a.m., Justin Johansson wrote: > > On 17/09/2010 6:48 PM, Nick B wrote: > >> On 16/09/2010 5:58 a.m., Andrei Alexandrescu wrote: > >>> A coworker asked me where he could find a brief document of D's design > >>> principles. This was after I'd mentioned the "no function hijacking" > >>> stance. > >> > >> there is no one, true, only to be used, library. D supports diversity. > > > > Using Walter's words this is a "trite platitude". > > > > Comments such as these are akin to saying "D is carbon neutral" > > without a supporting argument. > > > > Can you please support your argument with more substance, i.e. > > more sausage and less sizzle. :-) > > Is the fact there are two libraries, and not one, or twenty, a strength, > and not a weakness, of the language and the D community. > > For example, see this list of (approx 100) C++ libraries: > http://www.trumphurst.com/cpplibs1.html#9 > > I think that this large number of libraries, just leads to fragmentation > of effort by the C++ community. > > Nick B
The fact that D has so few libraries is almost certainly temporary (not to mention, if you look at dsource, there are quite a few, though most of them are essentially dead). Even Java, which has an extensive standard library, has all kinds of 3rd party libraries floating around. Certainly, C++ suffers in part because its standard library is so lacking in functionality, but even if it were fantastic, there would still be plenty of C++ libraries floating around. Any language which is used by a lot of people will eventually have a lot of libraries unless the language itself somehow restricts it (which none do to my knowledge). There's nothing inherent in the D language which would restrict the number of libraries. Whether there is one library or 5 million has nothing to do with the language itself, so I really don't think that it makes sense to talk about the number of libraries that D has being part of the philosophy behind it. And honestly, while there aren't 100+ D libraries floating around, the division in the community over Phobos vs Tango gives the impression that one of the philosophies of D is to have one library. - Jonathan M Davis
