D and the world

[eao197]

On Mon, 23 Apr 2007 07:05:02 +0400, janderson <askme at me.com> wrote:

> The way I see it D has 2 options, provide an easy way for C++ users to  
> switch over or become D.net.  The problem is, it is extremely  
> impracticable to switch over to D because:
>
> 1) Everything is already in C++.  It would take months to switch over.  
> Time that no one has.
> 2) Many API's are in C++.  Porting is too dam time consuming.  There are  
> so many API's that companies use, it is impossible to have them all  
> ported.

You talk about 'switching form C++ to D' to port and maintain existing  
C++ code base to D. But there is another part of story: new software must  
be written and it can be written without need of porting big amount of  
C++ code to D. Why not to continue support of C++ projects in C++ and  
start new projects in D?

> 3) Learning.  People are resistant to learning new things.  I think this  
> hurdle is easiest to jump if the other 2 are in place.

D is a easy way to jump form C++ to something modern and powerful. I spent  
big amount of time last two years searching a competitive alternative to  
C++ (I learnt Eiffel, Nemerle, Scala, D and looked on some other  
languages). And D is the most similar to C++ than any other and I (as a  
long-time C++ user) found that D is the most comfortable language for me.  
So I can say that learning D after C++ is much much easier task then  
learning, for example, Scala.

> D.Net option:

I don't think D would be demanded on .Net platform. .Net already has C#  
and VB.NET with VisualStudio and other IDEs. In the future .Net would get  
yet another very promised language -- Nemerle. So may be better  
alternative is to make a D-to-JVM byte code compiler :)


And my 2 copecks about 'how D can conquer the world' :)
I don't care about couquering the world. It doesn't matter for me would be  
D on #1 in TIOBE rank or on #33. I care about how useful D would be for  
me, my team and my tasks.

I know D is useful for me. And I have started to port some of our  
home-grown frameworks to D.
I know D is more simple than С++ and, in some cases, more powerful. I know  
that because I have learnt it. So I can teach my team to program in D and  
I know this would be much easier then teaching C++.
I know D has almost all that I need for my current tasks (thanks to Tango  
team) and I can write missing ones.

But at the current moment of time usage of D seems too risky because of:
* language itself constantly changes. I don't think it is a big problem in  
my case because I hope that D will be stabilized in near future and that  
time will be spent by doing some proof-of-concept, non-business-critical  
projects;
* lack of tools and libraries. I don't need sophisticated IDE for myself  
(VIM is an ultimate answer;) ), but many people think that language has no  
future if it doesn't have Idea- or VisualStudio-like IDE;
* lack of promotion. It should be much more information about D in the  
world: books (something like 'The C++ Programming Language' and  
'Programming Ruby 2nd'), tuturials, articles, blogs and discussions in  
various forums. Not only in English, but in different languages in  
different countries. I can say that in Russia (Belarus, Ukraine) there are  
much programmers who don't know English enough to learn new language, but  
they programm in C++, Java and C# because there are a lot of information  
about these languages in Russian (translated and originaly written books,  
articles, big programmers forums and so on);
* lack of success stories. I think it is very important when it is  
possible to demonstrate some examples of successful usage of D to chiefs.  
I told about D and perspectives of its usage to my chief a short time ago  
and got simple question: "It is interesting, but who use D now and what  
have been written in D?".

But I hope those are temporary problems and they will gone away as D and D  
community will grow.

-- 
Regards,
Yauheni Akhotnikau