Re: is it possible to learn D(2)?
Andrei Alexandrescu wrote: The main issue is perceived value. Books are not T-shirts as significant time would have to be spent on reading them. Say I had 40 people in the audience and 40 books. Then it would have been like passing around marketing samples of no perceived value. Right. If you passed them out to all comers, they'd share the fate of all such premiums. A third would be left on the floor, a third in the trash bins on the way out, a third taken home and forgotten about, and none read.
Re: is it possible to learn D(2)?
On 12/20/2010 02:48 AM, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote: Yes, how about it? Is this a murder investigation? I have a hard time figuring out what is the ultimate purpose of spelunking my past statements to look for inconsistencies. Hypocrisy is a pet peeve of mine. How about discussing the gory problems with const, and discussing the true state of the language at the next D talk? If you're going to bash Go presentations for cherry-picking, you should hold yourself to the same standards. As for why I did the research, if people are going to deny statements I made, then I'm going to back them up with facts. I did rescind one erroneous statement of mine. My original post was in response to a thread about somebody looking to jump into D2, and somebody who responded asking why D1 was even being worked on. I'd say my post was on topic.
Re: is it possible to learn D(2)?
On 12/20/10 6:02 AM, Jeff Nowakowski wrote: On 12/20/2010 02:48 AM, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote: Yes, how about it? Is this a murder investigation? I have a hard time figuring out what is the ultimate purpose of spelunking my past statements to look for inconsistencies. Hypocrisy is a pet peeve of mine. How about discussing the gory problems with const, and discussing the true state of the language at the next D talk? If you're going to bash Go presentations for cherry-picking, you should hold yourself to the same standards. I understand. The issue is comparing apples with apples. Every language has implementation bugs and shortcomings. I'd be glad to discuss them if the gist of the talk were the state of implementation, or if asked during any of my talks on D. What I didn't find becoming about the aforementioned talk on Go was that it presented only the good consequences of some PL design choices that come with tradeoffs having pluses and minuses in almost equal supplies. Taking that stand to its logical conclusion would lead one to believe that Go figured out some point that all other languages missed, which in my humble opinion is not the case. (BTW I believe that D _did_ figure out some points, and did make decisions with mostly positive consequences, that all other languages missed, such as the scope statement.) As for why I did the research, if people are going to deny statements I made, then I'm going to back them up with facts. I did rescind one erroneous statement of mine. Will the jury please disregard the erroneous statement. My original post was in response to a thread about somebody looking to jump into D2, and somebody who responded asking why D1 was even being worked on. I'd say my post was on topic. I agree. Andrei
Re: is it possible to learn D(2)?
On Mon, 20 Dec 2010 07:02:51 -0500 Jeff == Jeff Nowakowski j...@dilacero.org wrote: Hi Jeff, Jeff Hypocrisy is a pet peeve of mine. How about discussing the gory Jeff problems with const, and discussing the true state of the Jeff language at the next D talk? If you're going to bash Go Jeff presentations for cherry-picking, you should hold yourself to the Jeff same standards. Please don't take it personal...I'm just taking 'advantage' of your post to suggest to all the posters one thing: Please be a little bit more positive towards Walter and Andrei. They are not Supermans but sincerely trying to give some good to us and it's practically free. Long ago, I bought and used Walter's Zortech C++ compiler which was superb. Then I left programming waters and returned back some years ago. I didn't want to go to C(++) which evolved into huge beast and skipped all the scripting languages trying my fortune with Haskell. However, after some time I've decided that I want something more pragmatic...read a bit about D, saw Andrei's Google presentation (I liked his enthusiasm), bought the TDPL book (and put it in hardcover to last longer) and now I'm slowly learning the language hoping to use it in a real-world along with QtD. Yes, I'm not blind and can see that some mistakes were probably done within D community...D is certainly not perfect language (this title is already reserved for Sanskrit :-) ), but if you can tell me about better language to be used for practical daily programming having feature set or covering different programming paradigms - here I am. ;) I did my homework and nothing is similar to D, so please make this newsgroup more pleasant place by uttering some nice words about Walter Bright. I sincerely believe they're humans who like to get some encouragement as well instead of constant downpour of (very often) unjustified criticism. If anyone can do better, pls. step in and show the example...otherwise, let's us show some gratitude towards people trying to make programming more fun. Sincerely, Gour -- Gour | Hlapicina, Croatia | GPG key: CDBF17CA signature.asc Description: PGP signature
Re: is it possible to learn D(2)?
Caligo wrote: If there is going to be a D3, will it be backwards compatible with D2? D3 plans are a complete unknown at the moment. And why is work still being done on the D1 compiler? Shouldn't it be marked deprecated so people stop using it and move to D2? Since there are many breaking changes from D1 to D2, and a lot of people have large code bases in D1, it makes sense to support them with bug fixes. However, no new features are added to D1.
Re: is it possible to learn D(2)?
Walter Bright Wrote: Caligo wrote: If there is going to be a D3, will it be backwards compatible with D2? D3 plans are a complete unknown at the moment. So, what's the main reason D3 plans are unknown? Have you got a list of realistic new features? Is it lack of manpower? Too early to release anything new now that D2 isn't in serious production use yet?
Re: is it possible to learn D(2)?
Jean Crystof wrote: So, what's the main reason D3 plans are unknown? Have you got a list of realistic new features? Is it lack of manpower? Too early to release anything new now that D2 isn't in serious production use yet? D2 first.
Re: is it possible to learn D(2)?
Andrei Alexandrescu Wrote: On 12/18/10 3:44 PM, Jeff Nowakowski wrote: On 12/18/2010 03:16 PM, Don wrote: Jeff Nowakowski wrote: D2 has *never* been officially released (like D1 was), though its release was supposed to coincide with the release of Andrei's book. Where did you get that idea? I've never heard it before. (Genuine question, I'd like to know where that impression came from). Which idea are you questioning? That D2 hasn't been released, or that the two were supposed to come out together? The answer to both would be the newsgroup. There was plenty of talk about them coming out together, and then time went by, and Andrei's book was relatively quietly released (unless I missed some big announcement; my memory was of posts trickling in of people who had pre-ordered), and no mention was made of D2 being released any more along with the book. I can dig up posts if you like, but I'd rather not unless any of this is in dispute. I don't think it's worth investigating this, but at any rate my thinking has been that finalizing TDPL would finalize the specification of D2. Of course, ideally the compiler would follow the specification as closely as possible, but with the number of extant issues it has always been pretty clear that conformance will be trailing. The book hasn't been released quietly at all; I've sent numerous updates to this group (just search for TDPL in the title) and my website has made the event as prominent as it could. As it was clearly highly anticipated in this group, laying it any thicker would have been inappropriate. Walter and Andrei haven't been very honest in their presentations on the state of the language. I think the initial estimate of how long things would take was wildly optimistic. I am certain that there's been no intention to be dishonest, at any stage. Andrei gives other people a lot of shit over only showing the positive in their presentations. Both Andrei and Walter have misrepresented the open source compiler issues on their slides (and Walter had no excuse after Andrei was called for it on the newsgroup). I saw Andrei's Google presentation and he talked a lot about D2 features and gave away a lot of books, but never once said that D2 was still being implemented and that serious bugs remained. A fair point. Well I didn't give away a lot of books, I gave three, and specifically for the three most embarrassing questions. (My budget of giveaway books is fairly limited.) Does this mean that Facebook is not paying you that well, after all? I could donate like $82 to you to give away three more books. No need to mention my name, after all I'm just helping the poor.
Re: is it possible to learn D(2)?
On 12/19/10, lurker l...@lurk.net wrote: Does this mean that Facebook is not paying you that well, after all? I could donate like $82 to you to give away three more books. No need to mention my name, after all I'm just helping the poor. I'm pretty sure it means he got a couple of free books from the publisher to give away for free. ;)
Re: is it possible to learn D(2)?
On 12/19/10 9:57 AM, Andrej Mitrovic wrote: On 12/19/10, lurkerl...@lurk.net wrote: Does this mean that Facebook is not paying you that well, after all? I could donate like $82 to you to give away three more books. No need to mention my name, after all I'm just helping the poor. I'm pretty sure it means he got a couple of free books from the publisher to give away for free. ;) The main issue is perceived value. Books are not T-shirts as significant time would have to be spent on reading them. Say I had 40 people in the audience and 40 books. Then it would have been like passing around marketing samples of no perceived value. Andrei
Re: is it possible to learn D(2)?
On Sun, Dec 19, 2010 at 10:16 AM, Andrei Alexandrescu seewebsiteforem...@erdani.org wrote: On 12/19/10 9:57 AM, Andrej Mitrovic wrote: On 12/19/10, lurkerl...@lurk.net wrote: Does this mean that Facebook is not paying you that well, after all? I could donate like $82 to you to give away three more books. No need to mention my name, after all I'm just helping the poor. I'm pretty sure it means he got a couple of free books from the publisher to give away for free. ;) The main issue is perceived value. Books are not T-shirts as significant time would have to be spent on reading them. Say I had 40 people in the audience and 40 books. Then it would have been like passing around marketing samples of no perceived value. Andrei That's almost like saying all documentations, books, and reference materials licensed under GNU FDL are worthless because you don't have to pay for them. There are actually people who think that about FOSS; eh, if it was worth anything they wouldn't let you download the source code for free. I actually think your book would have been worth more if you had released it under GNU FDL or a similar license.
Re: is it possible to learn D(2)?
On 12/19/10 11:00 AM, Caligo wrote: On Sun, Dec 19, 2010 at 10:16 AM, Andrei Alexandrescu seewebsiteforem...@erdani.org mailto:seewebsiteforem...@erdani.org wrote: On 12/19/10 9:57 AM, Andrej Mitrovic wrote: On 12/19/10, lurkerl...@lurk.net mailto:l...@lurk.net wrote: Does this mean that Facebook is not paying you that well, after all? I could donate like $82 to you to give away three more books. No need to mention my name, after all I'm just helping the poor. I'm pretty sure it means he got a couple of free books from the publisher to give away for free. ;) The main issue is perceived value. Books are not T-shirts as significant time would have to be spent on reading them. Say I had 40 people in the audience and 40 books. Then it would have been like passing around marketing samples of no perceived value. Andrei That's almost like saying all documentations, books, and reference materials licensed under GNU FDL are worthless because you don't have to pay for them. There are actually people who think that about FOSS; eh, if it was worth anything they wouldn't let you download the source code for free. That's a completely different matter, but I won't insist as I'm sure you understand the extent to which you're forcing the comparison. I actually think your book would have been worth more if you had released it under GNU FDL or a similar license. I do a lot of work for free anyway so making money was not the first motivation. The thing is, however, that printed books still carry more authority than online ones, even though clearly there are many online books that compare favorably with the average printed book. Having a major publisher decide to take risks and invest money in producing at professional quality and marketing a book on a up-and-coming language is a clear signal that they believe in the success of the book and consequently that of the language. Andrei
Re: is it possible to learn D(2)?
On Sun, 19 Dec 2010 11:14:08 -0600 Andrei == Andrei Alexandrescu wrote: Andrei The thing is, however, that printed books still carry more Andrei authority than online ones, even though clearly there are many Andrei online books that compare favorably with the average printed Andrei book. I agree...For instance I bought Real World Haskell although it's available online for free. The only gripe I have about it is that it probably came too late for me. (I tried to learn Haskell before that.) Otoh, TDPL has come on time, I like it and, similarly, would buy it even if there would be free version online. Now, I'm happy being assured that D(2) can be learnt using TDPL. :-) Thanks to all for replies. ;) Sincerely, Gour -- Gour | Hlapicina, Croatia | GPG key: CDBF17CA signature.asc Description: PGP signature
Re: is it possible to learn D(2)?
On 12/19/10, Gour g...@atmarama.net wrote: Now, I'm happy being assured that D(2) can be learnt using TDPL. :-) And if you get stuck with something don't hesitate asking about it in d-learn!
Re: is it possible to learn D(2)?
On Sun, 19 Dec 2010 19:35:52 +0100 Andrej == Andrej Mitrovic andrej.mitrov...@gmail.com wrote: Andrej Andrej And if you get stuck with something don't hesitate asking about Sure. Thanks. btw, it would be nice to have code examples from TDPL to save some typing. Sincerely, Gour -- Gour | Hlapicina, Croatia | GPG key: CDBF17CA signature.asc Description: PGP signature
Re: is it possible to learn D(2)?
Andrei Alexandrescu seewebsiteforem...@erdani.org wrote in message news:ielekh$1qg...@digitalmars.com... Having a major publisher decide to take risks and invest money in producing at professional quality and marketing a book on a up-and-coming language is a clear signal that they believe in the success of the book and consequently that of the language. FWIW, if I'm trying to discern the quality or worth of a language, I wouldn't really consider a book publisher to be an authority on that any more than, say, a dentist. (Well, ok, maybe more than a dentist, but you get what I mean.)
Re: is it possible to learn D(2)?
On 12/19/2010 01:44 AM, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote: I don't think it's worth investigating this, but at any rate my thinking has been that finalizing TDPL would finalize the specification of D2. Of course, ideally the compiler would follow the specification as closely as possible, but with the number of extant issues it has always been pretty clear that conformance will be trailing. Always? It became clear at some point, but did you really not expect all the features to be fully implemented when you started the book? How about this statement from you: May 15, 2009: Re: Please Vote: Exercises in TDPL? One nice thing is I've written (in D!) a little script that extracts the code from all of my examples, compiles it, and runs it comparing the output with the expected output. The book will definitely have a number of faults, but code that doesn't work will not be one of them. [..] There's still stuff that doesn't compile (Walter is working on that) The book hasn't been released quietly at all; I've sent numerous updates to this group (just search for TDPL in the title) and my website has made the event as prominent as it could. I agree and retract my statement: the release wasn't quiet. What stuck out in my mind was that there was talk of an imminent release, and then weeks went by before somebody reported receiving the book. I guess that's just lag time in the publication process. Well I didn't give away a lot of books, I gave three, and specifically for the three most embarrassing questions. It was 6. You mentioned the number at the very beginning of your talk. It is nice that you prodded for embarrassing questions. Another thing would be that I tend to focus on language power, because that's perennial, and consider implementation bugs something transitory. People who hear a talk about something and want to try it out will very much care about implementation bugs. You should warn them in advance, especially for major bugs and unimplemented features. As of today I can't offhand think of a feature in TDPL that we don't know how to implement in D, and that topic is important. Problems with theoretical designs are often found after implementation and usage. It's certainly been the case with D and immutability + concurrency. I sure hope you give an honest review at the next D talk. This is what you said about a Go programming talk on this newsgroup: I'm surprised you found the talk compelling, as I'm sure you know better. The talk uses a common technique - cherry-picking examples and avoiding to discuss costs and tradeoffs - to make the language look good. Maybe you can talk about all the problems that have been exposed with D's model of immutability. I think these statements from you would be a good starting point: Aug 16, 2010: Re: The Status of Const Const and immutable will be used less often than in C++. This might seem a weakness to those coming from C++ where const can and should be sprinkled often, but it is a natural consequence of the relative restrictions imposed by const in C++ vs. D. D's const is more restrictive, and as such will find its way in fewer idioms than C++'s. Sep 17, 2010: Re: QtD is suspended But by and large I think the matter could gave have be settled in a different manner: by not catering for const in the first release. D has a lot to offer besides const, and its const subsystem is a good bit more restrictive than e.g. C++'s, mainly to help with concurrency.
Re: is it possible to learn D(2)?
On 12/19/10 1:20 PM, Nick Sabalausky wrote: Andrei Alexandrescuseewebsiteforem...@erdani.org wrote in message news:ielekh$1qg...@digitalmars.com... Having a major publisher decide to take risks and invest money in producing at professional quality and marketing a book on a up-and-coming language is a clear signal that they believe in the success of the book and consequently that of the language. FWIW, if I'm trying to discern the quality or worth of a language, I wouldn't really consider a book publisher to be an authority on that any more than, say, a dentist. (Well, ok, maybe more than a dentist, but you get what I mean.) The comparison does not fit. This is about making a business decision on whether to invest a large fixed cost into a book. Andrei
Re: is it possible to learn D(2)?
On 12/19/10 9:19 PM, Jeff Nowakowski wrote: On 12/19/2010 01:44 AM, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote: I don't think it's worth investigating this, but at any rate my thinking has been that finalizing TDPL would finalize the specification of D2. Of course, ideally the compiler would follow the specification as closely as possible, but with the number of extant issues it has always been pretty clear that conformance will be trailing. Always? It became clear at some point, but did you really not expect all the features to be fully implemented when you started the book? How about this statement from you: May 15, 2009: Re: Please Vote: Exercises in TDPL? One nice thing is I've written (in D!) a little script that extracts the code from all of my examples, compiles it, and runs it comparing the output with the expected output. The book will definitely have a number of faults, but code that doesn't work will not be one of them. [..] There's still stuff that doesn't compile (Walter is working on that) Yes, how about it? Is this a murder investigation? I have a hard time figuring out what is the ultimate purpose of spelunking my past statements to look for inconsistencies. Andrei
is it possible to learn D(2)?
Hello, Seeing all the threads here about improving D(2) syntax for different features of the language, I just wonder if it's possible to learn D(2) language which is so much in flux by using TDPL as reference? Now I may have some time to learn D(2), but wonder when will the language become more stable or the proposals/improvements discussed here (I skip over majority of such threads) are not major changes? Sincerely, Gour -- Gour | Hlapicina, Croatia | GPG key: CDBF17CA signature.asc Description: PGP signature
Re: is it possible to learn D(2)?
On Saturday 18 December 2010 01:14:19 Gour wrote: Hello, Seeing all the threads here about improving D(2) syntax for different features of the language, I just wonder if it's possible to learn D(2) language which is so much in flux by using TDPL as reference? Now I may have some time to learn D(2), but wonder when will the language become more stable or the proposals/improvements discussed here (I skip over majority of such threads) are not major changes? TDPL is mostly correct. There are a few features that it discusses that either quite buggy or outright unimplemented (e.g. neither inout and alias this is completely implemented and some of what is implemented is rather buggy). There are also some features which may change. However, at this point, stuff is only going to change with a really good reason, and most of such changes are likely to be additive and wouldn't break much - if anything. For instance, weak purity is essentially an additive change. It makes it so that more functions can be marked as pure, but it doesn't make more functions optimizable due to purity, and it doesn't break any code. Prior to the release of TDPL, there were at times major changes between releases of dmd which broke a lot of code. That doesn't really happen anymore. For the most part, if you follow TDPL, you will be fine. Some stuff in TDPL won't work yet in practice, and it is possible that a few changes will be made to the language at some point which break current code and/or contradict TDPL. But no such changes have yet been made, I don't believe, and there are none which have been decided upon. None will be made without a definite, compelling reason, precisely because TDPL is supposed to be valid. D2 is not entirely stable, but it the spec is no longer in constant flux either. Some changes likely will happen, but only as necessary, and they're going to be rare. And as time passes, they will become even rarer. Some folks will continue to discuss possible features for D which will never make it into D2. If there is ever a D3, they may be included then, but stuff like non-nullable references is not going to make it into the language in D2 (though there may be a library solution for it). Now, Phobos is certainly in flux. Parts of it are quite stable and won't be changing particularly, but there's plenty of it which will continue to evolve, and there will certainly be more stuff being added. Phobos is still very much a work in progress. Really, the biggest obstacle to D development at this point is likely simply bugs - be they in the compiler or in Phobos. The situation continues to improve, but there are bugs which pop up from time to time which can cause major headaches (like inout being totally broken at the moment). The language spec is essentially stable, but not necessarily set in stone. In almost all cases, you can rely on TDPL being correct. So, I wouldn't worry too much about that. Compiler bugs are far more likely to trip you up than any language changes. If and when they happen, they'll probably remove certain types of problems rather than causing much in the way of new ones anyway. - Jonathan M Davis
Re: is it possible to learn D(2)?
Gour wrote: Hello, Seeing all the threads here about improving D(2) syntax for different features of the language, I just wonder if it's possible to learn D(2) language which is so much in flux by using TDPL as reference? Now I may have some time to learn D(2), but wonder when will the language become more stable or the proposals/improvements discussed here (I skip over majority of such threads) are not major changes? Sincerely, Gour Yes, it's not so much in flux as it seems. Like Jonathan says, it's more that some parts of phobos are unstable and certain bugs can stand in the way. Breaking changes to the language itself are very rare / unlikely now. I can't remember when such a thing broke my code whereas it used to happen every month. You can browse the changelog*, which lists new features for every release, to get a picture of the evolution. But also consider that most of the issues talked about are the more 'advanced' parts of the language. The bread and butter features haven't been changed that much for a long time now and are pretty solid. * http://www.digitalmars.com/d/2.0/changelog.html
Re: is it possible to learn D(2)?
If there is going to be a D3, will it be backwards compatible with D2? And why is work still being done on the D1 compiler? Shouldn't it be marked deprecated so people stop using it and move to D2? Also, do you know if there are any plans to standardize the language? Is the specification complete? On Sat, Dec 18, 2010 at 3:36 AM, Jonathan M Davis jmdavisp...@gmx.comwrote: On Saturday 18 December 2010 01:14:19 Gour wrote: Hello, Seeing all the threads here about improving D(2) syntax for different features of the language, I just wonder if it's possible to learn D(2) language which is so much in flux by using TDPL as reference? Now I may have some time to learn D(2), but wonder when will the language become more stable or the proposals/improvements discussed here (I skip over majority of such threads) are not major changes? TDPL is mostly correct. There are a few features that it discusses that either quite buggy or outright unimplemented (e.g. neither inout and alias this is completely implemented and some of what is implemented is rather buggy). There are also some features which may change. However, at this point, stuff is only going to change with a really good reason, and most of such changes are likely to be additive and wouldn't break much - if anything. For instance, weak purity is essentially an additive change. It makes it so that more functions can be marked as pure, but it doesn't make more functions optimizable due to purity, and it doesn't break any code. Prior to the release of TDPL, there were at times major changes between releases of dmd which broke a lot of code. That doesn't really happen anymore. For the most part, if you follow TDPL, you will be fine. Some stuff in TDPL won't work yet in practice, and it is possible that a few changes will be made to the language at some point which break current code and/or contradict TDPL. But no such changes have yet been made, I don't believe, and there are none which have been decided upon. None will be made without a definite, compelling reason, precisely because TDPL is supposed to be valid. D2 is not entirely stable, but it the spec is no longer in constant flux either. Some changes likely will happen, but only as necessary, and they're going to be rare. And as time passes, they will become even rarer. Some folks will continue to discuss possible features for D which will never make it into D2. If there is ever a D3, they may be included then, but stuff like non-nullable references is not going to make it into the language in D2 (though there may be a library solution for it). Now, Phobos is certainly in flux. Parts of it are quite stable and won't be changing particularly, but there's plenty of it which will continue to evolve, and there will certainly be more stuff being added. Phobos is still very much a work in progress. Really, the biggest obstacle to D development at this point is likely simply bugs - be they in the compiler or in Phobos. The situation continues to improve, but there are bugs which pop up from time to time which can cause major headaches (like inout being totally broken at the moment). The language spec is essentially stable, but not necessarily set in stone. In almost all cases, you can rely on TDPL being correct. So, I wouldn't worry too much about that. Compiler bugs are far more likely to trip you up than any language changes. If and when they happen, they'll probably remove certain types of problems rather than causing much in the way of new ones anyway. - Jonathan M Davis
Re: is it possible to learn D(2)?
On 12/18/2010 07:55 AM, Caligo wrote: If there is going to be a D3, will it be backwards compatible with D2? And why is work still being done on the D1 compiler? Shouldn't it be marked deprecated so people stop using it and move to D2? D1 is stable and only bug fixes are being applied to it. For D2, the post you replied to mentioned compiler bugs several times, and also mentioned unimplemented features. D2 has *never* been officially released (like D1 was), though its release was supposed to coincide with the release of Andrei's book. The date kept on getting pushed further and further back, until finally the book came out (publishers only have so much patience), and no mention of D being released was made. Walter and Andrei haven't been very honest in their presentations on the state of the language. I know a software project is never finished, in that you can't expect perfection, but D2 is still in the alpha state. It's not reasonable for features documented in the definitive book on the language to not work. Also, the crown jewel of D2 was supposed to be immutability and concurrency, and those are the buggiest parts.
Re: is it possible to learn D(2)?
Caligo: If there is going to be a D3, will it be backwards compatible with D2? This is the desire (but some details may be not fully backward compatible). And why is work still being done on the D1 compiler? Bug fixes, mostly. Also, do you know if there are any plans to standardize the language? Is the specification complete? The specification is not complete yet. Several more years will need to pass (probably 3 or 5) before standardization is able to start strongly with hope to be complete too. Bye, bearophile
Re: is it possible to learn D(2)?
Jeff Nowakowski wrote: On 12/18/2010 07:55 AM, Caligo wrote: If there is going to be a D3, will it be backwards compatible with D2? And why is work still being done on the D1 compiler? Shouldn't it be marked deprecated so people stop using it and move to D2? D1 is stable and only bug fixes are being applied to it. For D2, the post you replied to mentioned compiler bugs several times, and also mentioned unimplemented features. D2 has *never* been officially released (like D1 was), though its release was supposed to coincide with the release of Andrei's book. Where did you get that idea? I've never heard it before. (Genuine question, I'd like to know where that impression came from). The date kept on getting pushed further and further back, until finally the book came out (publishers only have so much patience), and no mention of D being released was made. Walter and Andrei haven't been very honest in their presentations on the state of the language. I think the initial estimate of how long things would take was wildly optimistic. I am certain that there's been no intention to be dishonest, at any stage. I know a software project is never finished, in that you can't expect perfection, but D2 is still in the alpha state. It's not reasonable for features documented in the definitive book on the language to not work. Agreed. Unfortunately, the publishers couldn't be delayed any further. There are a few things in the book which still don't work, and will take another couple of releases to be implemented. (A few months before release, the list of non-implemented features was quite long. Most of the things on the list _were_ implemented in time. A couple turned out to be unexpectedly difficult). Also, the crown jewel of D2 was supposed to be immutability and concurrency, and those are the buggiest parts. Well, they are the most difficult bits! So if anything were to be incomplete, it would be those.
Re: is it possible to learn D(2)?
On 12/18/2010 03:16 PM, Don wrote: Jeff Nowakowski wrote: D2 has *never* been officially released (like D1 was), though its release was supposed to coincide with the release of Andrei's book. Where did you get that idea? I've never heard it before. (Genuine question, I'd like to know where that impression came from). Which idea are you questioning? That D2 hasn't been released, or that the two were supposed to come out together? The answer to both would be the newsgroup. There was plenty of talk about them coming out together, and then time went by, and Andrei's book was relatively quietly released (unless I missed some big announcement; my memory was of posts trickling in of people who had pre-ordered), and no mention was made of D2 being released any more along with the book. I can dig up posts if you like, but I'd rather not unless any of this is in dispute. Walter and Andrei haven't been very honest in their presentations on the state of the language. I think the initial estimate of how long things would take was wildly optimistic. I am certain that there's been no intention to be dishonest, at any stage. Andrei gives other people a lot of shit over only showing the positive in their presentations. Both Andrei and Walter have misrepresented the open source compiler issues on their slides (and Walter had no excuse after Andrei was called for it on the newsgroup). I saw Andrei's Google presentation and he talked a lot about D2 features and gave away a lot of books, but never once said that D2 was still being implemented and that serious bugs remained.
Re: is it possible to learn D(2)?
Jeff Nowakowski j...@dilacero.org wrote in message news:ieja3o$gf...@digitalmars.com... On 12/18/2010 03:16 PM, Don wrote: Jeff Nowakowski wrote: D2 has *never* been officially released (like D1 was), though its release was supposed to coincide with the release of Andrei's book. Where did you get that idea? I've never heard it before. (Genuine question, I'd like to know where that impression came from). Which idea are you questioning? That D2 hasn't been released, or that the two were supposed to come out together? The answer to both would be the newsgroup. There was plenty of talk about them coming out together, and then time went by, and Andrei's book was relatively quietly released (unless I missed some big announcement; my memory was of posts trickling in of people who had pre-ordered), and no mention was made of D2 being released any more along with the book. I only remember the talk being about the D2 language spec getting frozen from breaking changes when the book came out. And that's happened.
Re: is it possible to learn D(2)?
On 12/18/10 3:44 PM, Jeff Nowakowski wrote: On 12/18/2010 03:16 PM, Don wrote: Jeff Nowakowski wrote: D2 has *never* been officially released (like D1 was), though its release was supposed to coincide with the release of Andrei's book. Where did you get that idea? I've never heard it before. (Genuine question, I'd like to know where that impression came from). Which idea are you questioning? That D2 hasn't been released, or that the two were supposed to come out together? The answer to both would be the newsgroup. There was plenty of talk about them coming out together, and then time went by, and Andrei's book was relatively quietly released (unless I missed some big announcement; my memory was of posts trickling in of people who had pre-ordered), and no mention was made of D2 being released any more along with the book. I can dig up posts if you like, but I'd rather not unless any of this is in dispute. I don't think it's worth investigating this, but at any rate my thinking has been that finalizing TDPL would finalize the specification of D2. Of course, ideally the compiler would follow the specification as closely as possible, but with the number of extant issues it has always been pretty clear that conformance will be trailing. The book hasn't been released quietly at all; I've sent numerous updates to this group (just search for TDPL in the title) and my website has made the event as prominent as it could. As it was clearly highly anticipated in this group, laying it any thicker would have been inappropriate. Walter and Andrei haven't been very honest in their presentations on the state of the language. I think the initial estimate of how long things would take was wildly optimistic. I am certain that there's been no intention to be dishonest, at any stage. Andrei gives other people a lot of shit over only showing the positive in their presentations. Both Andrei and Walter have misrepresented the open source compiler issues on their slides (and Walter had no excuse after Andrei was called for it on the newsgroup). I saw Andrei's Google presentation and he talked a lot about D2 features and gave away a lot of books, but never once said that D2 was still being implemented and that serious bugs remained. A fair point. Well I didn't give away a lot of books, I gave three, and specifically for the three most embarrassing questions. (My budget of giveaway books is fairly limited.) Another thing would be that I tend to focus on language power, because that's perennial, and consider implementation bugs something transitory. As of today I can't offhand think of a feature in TDPL that we don't know how to implement in D, and that topic is important. Andrei
