What you use D for?

Georg Wrede georg at nospam.org
Thu May 15 10:35:27 PDT 2008


Arne wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
> I'm a developer specialised in making eclipse based IDEs. We consider
> to create a comercial quality IDE for D but are unsure if it will pay
> of (and so we are able to throw full time developers at the project).

I assume this would not be an eclipse plugin. I'm also expecting it to 
be programmed using D or some other fast, native compiling language. And 
I expect it to work on both Linux and Windows.

> We need to know if there will be enough customers. Do you use D for
> commercial projects? Does your company make money with it? And is
> able to pay for an IDE (if it fullfill your needs and speed up your
> development, of course)?

If you look at the publicity D has been acquiring at an ever expanding 
rate, D's position on the Tiobe language index, and finally, industry 
insiders' opinions on D, it should be obvious there is enough potential 
with D.

Further, if you look at the scarcity of good IDEs that really function 
well with D and support D's specific features (templates, mixins, unit 
tests, documentation comments), you'd immediately see that a commercial 
quality IDE for D is an excellent choice compared to writing an IDE for 
any other language right now.

Now, as to financial returns: superior quality will bring you the money 
back. This superior quality here means, of course, being bug free, but 
most of all, it means the needed features are all there, no superfluos 
bells or whistles -- and it has to have superior support for the above 
mentioned language features.

For example, support for documentation comments means the editor shows 
them "as on a web site", i.e. interpreted, and when the programmer wants 
to edit them the IDE shows fill-in boxes for the various values and free 
text. Or in some other (possibly yet uninvented) manner helps in editing 
and viewing them, as well as helping them stay congruent with the actual 
code.

I'd pay $50 any day for such an IDE. But a bit of a warning is in order 
here. Before I'd pay the $50, I'd have to become convinced that it's not 
a waste of time from my part. That means, I'd have to have read positive 
reviews on quality sites, seen people in this NG talk favorably of it, 
and, then of course tried it on both Linux and Windows myself, before 
buying.

You'd probably have to start with a free version that you gradually 
improve on until it meets and beats the competition, and only then start 
charging for it. This will take years of development, a team that really 
can beat the other teams in finding and realizing superior solutions to 
the programming tasks, and you simply will need to garner the support 
and help of the user community. And the transition from free to non-free 
is both a managerial and a marketing challenge one should not belittle.

> It would be helpfull if you can describe in a few words what you do
> with D and perhaps could provide a link.

I've written a process monitoring and controlling application for the 
plastics industry in D, some 2 years ago. It is still in use, but I 
don't have a web page for it, since it was programmed for a customer.



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