I have a plan.. I really DO

[Ecstatic Coder]

On Sunday, 1 July 2018 at 02:57:26 UTC, RhyS wrote:
> On Saturday, 30 June 2018 at 07:11:18 UTC, Joakim wrote:
>> I'd hope a manager would look at actually meaningful stats 
>> like downloads, rather than just fluffy stats such as "likes":
>>
>> http://www.somsubhra.com/github-release-stats/?username=crystal-lang&repository=crystal
>> http://www.somsubhra.com/github-release-stats/?username=ldc-developers&repository=ldc
>>
>> I see around 9k total downloads of the various Crystal 0.24 
>> and 0.25 versions over the last 8 months, compared to 14k 
>> downloads of the ldc 1.9 compiler alone from two months ago.
>
> Its hard to compare those figure because D and Crystal also use 
> package installers on the respectable platforms. Going to the 
> crystal download page makes that very clear. Making tracking 
> downloads more harder.
>
> D can reach more Git downloads thanks to Windows users that do 
> not rely on Linux system packages.
>
> D its buginess in between releases also does not help. I 
> probably downloaded LDC and DMD in the last 9 months a dozen 
> times, being forced to go back to older versions. Then trying 
> the new versions, going back. Again and again on Windows.
>
> Downloads do not mean a lot when you can not keep the people. I 
> can swear that i alone am probably responsible for over 25+ 
> downloads on Windows and dozens on Linux OS. And every time D 
> loses me after running into issues.
>
> Crystal its 0.24 release is still perfectly working here. I 
> literally have downloaded 2 version in the last year. 0.23 and 
> 0.24... That is it. No switching between version because of 
> bugs or package issues or dependency issues. Kind of ironic but 
> maybe because the http server and other packages are build in 
> to the core, i have no need for external 3th party solutions 
> like D's Vibe.d.
>
>> Of course, all these stats can be gamed, but I think it'd be 
>> hard to argue Crystal is more popular.
>
> code.d
> Total 1336 packages found.
>
> crystalshards.xyz
> 3359 total shards
>
> Track both sites using archive.org and notice that Crystal is 
> growing faster in regards to Shards then D its packages.
>
> Duplicates D something like 6 postgresql driver packages. 
> Crystal has 2 drivers. So D is actually fluffing its numbers 
> with a lot of not maintained duplicates. Mysql ... Its not hard 
> to tell that Crystal its Shards community is more active.
>
> Crystal only recently got the funding to get a full time 
> employees to work on the code base. So one can expect the 
> development to increase from a mostly community driven 
> platform. They out gross Nim by almost double on average ( 
> salt.bountysource.com ) and that does not include the 2000$ / 
> month that "84 codes" directly donates.
>
> I do not know how much D takes in per month. This has always 
> been a more obscure, as is who are the people that really are 
> paid full time to work on D. Walter?
>
> Crystal needs a lot of work but so does D. You expect D to have 
> more its act together for a language this old. No default http 
> server in this day and age is just really weak sauce. And 
> Vibe.d breaks plenty of times in between its releases and DMD 
> releases.
>
> Both have issues but one is under development for 4 year and 
> the other for 16 years. You expect D to simply outclass Crystal 
> and other languages. Even Rust is out developing D in many 
> areas, a lot thanks to a big community.

+1

At the moement, D's default standard library obviously requires a 
garbage collector, and this won't change for a while.

Trying to convince developers to use D instead of C++ is often 
pointless, because most of the time, if you develop something in 
C++ instead of Java/C#/Go/etc, there is a reason for that.

And that reason why they don't use those nice garbage collected 
languages is generally the same reason why they won't use D 
either.

But those who currently use those same garbage collected 
languages (Go/Java/C#/etc) can be convinced to switch to D, 
because D's garbage collector won't be probably a problem for 
them either, as they are already using one in production.

So what remains a mystery for me is that the D leadership 
OBVIOUSLY CAN'T BE CONVINCED that marketing D as a Go/Java/C# 
alternative could be much more efficient than marketing D as a 
C/C++ alternative.

Why are they trying to sell D on its weakness, instead of selling 
it on its strength.

The only thing that D needs to compete on the same ground as Go 
and Crystal is to have similar default HTTP-related libraries, 
which don't rely on thirdparty libraries for the reasons you just 
explained...

Add a 10-liner "Hello World" web server example on the main page 
and that's it.

And if they REALLY want to ALSO compete with C++, then I strongly 
suggest to add weak and strong references to the syntax (for 
instance T& and T@), and provide an alternative standard library 
which doesn't require garbage collection at all, like those of 
C++ and Rust.

But I think it's quite obvious that the first option (Go-like) 
clearly requires less time and efforts than the second (C++-like).