Vision document for H1 2018

[Dylan Graham]

On Sunday, 11 March 2018 at 01:06:08 UTC, R wrote:
> On Sunday, 11 March 2018 at 00:36:19 UTC, Dylan Graham wrote:
>> Well, no. I'm more concerned with the fact that the D Language 
>> Foundation is focused on BetterC, yet does not mention DLLs at 
>> all.
>>
>> For God's sake, if D is the future, why does it continue to 
>> leech off C/C++? Other languages like Rust and C# only have 
>> basic function calling C (FFI/PInvoke) yet are way more 
>> popular. I get the feeling that most of the C++ programmers 
>> who would come to D have already done so.
>>
>> The most I'll ever need of interfacing with C and C++ is to be 
>> able to call their functions from D. I've no reason for 
>> BetterC.
>>
>> And what's with the language design, anyway? D has been 
>> designed with features that C++ programmers don't want, then 
>> now the D Language Foundation is wasting effort to change the 
>> language to rope those programmers in? If D was meant to be 
>> C++ 2.0, shouldn't it have been designed that way from the 
>> start?
>>
>> I came to D from a C# background. I was looking a language 
>> that had a GC, was awesome to program in and was very fast. 
>> Why can't D own up to these facts, rather than becoming a 
>> leech of C++?
>>
>> Every day D becomes more like C++ 2.0, why can't it just be D?
>
> Point to the wall on the left side. That is what your talking 
> to. D its focus on C++ as a bad plan has been made pushed by 
> many people ( lots who left ). Its like asking Go for Generics.

Yeah. It quite seems like that. Maybe after BetterC will the 
foundation get its priorities right.

> And its very nice to see the "71% in the poll do not want 
> BetterC", well, screw them comment. So what is the point again 
> by asking people opinions? And sure, BetterC can be reused to 
> improve the D core but that is not what people want NOW. And 
> yet, its a priority when 71% say its not!

Didn't BetterC start before the poll was issued? I hope that more 
polls like this are created in the future so that the leadership 
knows where it's priorities are based upon community demands.

> D simply is not equipped for dealing with people who come from 
> languages like C#, Ruby, PHP, Python, ... because too many 
> people here are C++ old timers ( yes, there are exceptions ) 
> and they only think in that direction.
>
> Kind of ironic when D keeps pushing for more features hoping 
> that it will attract C++ developers and the young kid on the 
> block Rust is already eating up that market. And "scripting" 
> language like PHP, that everybody criticizes just keeps growing 
> and gained 11% market share in the last 7 years ( at now 83% ). 
> Where as D its gain has been minimalist thanks to people 
> leaving almost as fast as it gain.
>
> There is a lesson the be learned in this somewhere...

I wholeheartedly agree, but I believe this direction is because 
that the "C++ old timers" are in the leadership. I don't think 
there are "too many" in the community.

I also wish to point out that I'm not attacking Walter or Alex; I 
love the language they've created, but I'm fairly annoyed with 
their allocation of resources. They need to stick by the language 
they've created.