[Semi-OT] I don't want to leave this language!

[bpr via Digitalmars-d-learn]

On Tuesday, 6 December 2016 at 22:47:34 UTC, Jonathan M Davis 
wrote:
> On Tuesday, December 06, 2016 22:13:54 bpr via 
> Digitalmars-d-learn wrote:
>> On Tuesday, 6 December 2016 at 17:00:35 UTC, Jonathan M Davis
>>
>> wrote:
> Sure, there are folks who would prefer not to have to deal with 
> the GC but throw out the runtime and std lib? You lose out on 
> too much for it to be at all worth it for many folks. At that 
> point, C++11/14/17 looks far more appealing, especially as it 
> continues to improve.

It's a counterfactual at this point, but I would guess that if D 
had left out the GC in 2010 when D2 came out it would have been 
ahead of C++ in many ways and perhaps would have been able to 
peel off more C++ programmers and achieve the momentum that Rust 
appears to have now. Yes, it would be missing some features on 
account of omitting GC, but D2 -GC in 2010 is still much better 
than C++ 2011. As C++ absorbs D features, the case for D seems 
weaker.

> We get plenty of folks who aren't big C/C++ programmers who are 
> interested in D. Yes, the majority seem to have a C++ 
> background, but we also get folks from C#, python, ruby, etc.

It would be nice to see a breakdown. From where I sit, it appears 
that most of the interest in D is from C++ users, and it doesn't 
appear that D popularity is rising so much. Any data that belies 
that sad assessment?