Comparison chart worries

[James Dennett]

torhu wrote:
> Lutger wrote:
>  > The point is that this part of the quote still holds true and from a
>> marketing perspective reflects bad on D:
>>
>> "Your comparison sheet is EXTREMELY misleading, as you completely
>> ignore the .NET framework, which extends C# far beyond anything D can
>> currently do. Ignoring the presence of many of these facilities in the
>> .NET framework is a really shady tactic to make D seem like it has
>> several important features that C# supposedly lacks."
> 
> From http://www.digitalmars.com/d/comparison.html:
> 
> "While many capabilities are available with standard libraries, this
> table is for features built in to the core language itself."
> 
> I guess the problem is that people don't read the introduction to the
> comparison. 

I don't think so; the problem I have is that the sentence you
quote above *confirms* that the table is intended to give a
skewed view that has little practical use in assessing the
merit of adding D to your toolchest.

> But it might be better to put 'library' instead of just
> 'no' in that table anyway, like someone suggested.  Than flames like the
> one you are quote might be less common.
> 
> I guess you just can't expect the slashdot crowd and many others to 'RTFA'.

It's very helpful when building a community not to assume
that all dissent comes from ignorance; the D community in
particular should remember that there are many experts who
know a lot about other languages (and *why* those languages
made the choices they did), and D has a relatively small
community (though hopefully also including smart, educated
people).

> And maybe the link to the comparison should be less prominent, and
> labelled 'comparison of built-in features' instead of just 'comparison'?

It would be even more useful if it came with an introduction
that placed more emphasis on why D chooses to put so much in
the core when other modern languages have largely evolved
towards smaller core languages with better library-building
facilities; some of that information is present elsewhere in
the D documentation (though some of the rationales themselves
could do with more work, as always).

-- James