D compilation is too slow and I am forking the compiler

[Laeeth Isharc]

On Monday, 26 November 2018 at 16:00:36 UTC, Guillaume Piolat 
wrote:
> On Thursday, 22 November 2018 at 04:48:09 UTC, Vladimir 
> Panteleev wrote:
>> On Wednesday, 21 November 2018 at 20:51:17 UTC, Walter Bright 
>> wrote:
>>> Unfortunately, you're right. The title will leave the 
>>> impression "D is slow at compiling". You have to carefully 
>>> read the article to see otherwise, and few will do that.
>>
>> Sorry about that. I'll have to think of two titles next time, 
>> one for the D community and one for everyone else.
>>
>> If it's of any consolation, the top comments in both 
>> discussion threads point out that the title is inaccurate on 
>> purpose.
>
> Please don't get me wrong, it's an excellent article, a 
> provocative title, and fantastic work going on. I didn't meant 
> to hurt!
>
> In my opinion language adoption is a seduction/sales process 
> very much like business-to-consumer is, the way I see it it's 
> strikingly similar to marketing B2C apps, unless there will be 
> no "impulse buy".

I think that there are different strategies - decent appeal to a 
broad market and having a very high appeal to a small market (but 
there has better be something good about your potential customer 
base ie 'D, if you find VBA too difficult' is probably not a good 
strategy!).  And you probably don't get to pick which situation 
you are in, and then one had better realise it and play the game 
you're in.  The particular kind of market will shape what works - 
in my business you approach a retail client base differently from 
regular institutional investors and then the worlds' largest 
pools of money involved something else again.

D isn't really marketed and it's definitely not sold.  That's an 
implicit strategy in itself.

Nassim Taleb raises the question of how do you choose between two 
surgeons, both recommended.  One looks the part and hangs his 
many certificates on his office wall.  The other looks scruffy 
with the appearance of a tradesman.  Who do you pick?  Taleb says 
pick the guy who doesn't look the part because if he got there 
without signalling he must have something going for him.

But in general you can appeal on merits mostly to an audience 
that is highly discerning and very capable.  If you haven't got 
any money to appeal to an audience that judges based on 
heuristics and social factors well then you can try to avoid 
accidentally putting people off, you can be creative with 
guerilla marketing but the key thing is to make the most of what 
you got.  If everyone else does things a certain way then if for 
some reason that's closed off to you for now then if you look 
closely, with active perception,you may well see opportunities 
that are neglected to approach the problem another way.

> Actually no less than 3 programmer friends came to (I'm the 
> weirdo-using-D and people are _always_ in disbelief and invent 
> all sorts of reasons not to try) saying they saw an article on 
> D on HN, with "D compilation is slow", and on further 
> examination they didn't read or at best the first paragraph. 
> But they did remember the title. They may rationally think 
> their opinion of D hasn't changed: aren't we highly capable 
> people?

It doesn't matter what most people think.  It matters what people 
who are on the fence or using D already a bit think.  Or people 
who have a lot of problems to which D is in part a solution only 
they didn't know about or think of D yet.

The messenger matters too.  If someone you trust and rate highly 
tells you something based on their experience that counts for a 
lot more than all the blog posts in the world.  And working code 
and lived experience dominates the social talk about it.

I've talked about D with the CTO of Bloomberg, the outgoing COO 
of Barclays investment bank, the number two guy at a 30bn hedge 
fund, the COO of the largest hedge fund in the world (depending 
on how you count) and more.  That's not going to change anything 
tomorrow but in time those kinds of conversations matter much 
more than what people might say on Reddit. It's not either /or of 
course, but it's just not worth sweating your reviews.

Finally the reasons people buy things are not what you might 
reasonably think!  Ask Walter how he was able to compete 
successfully for so long as a one man band with Microsoft.  I 
don't think his edge was in the beginning something calculated.


> Reasonable people may think marketing and biases don't apply to 
> them but they do, it works without your consent.

The thing is that we had a bubble in synthetic manufactured 
marketing.  And now increasingly people are tired of that and 
seek what's authentic, real and that doesn't pretend to be 
perfect.

That doesn't mean a bit of thought is a bad idea,just that it 
might matter less than you think that the D community isn't 
particularly interested in marketing.  Sometimes one can see that 
hidden in what superficially seems to be a weakness is a strength.