What you use D for?

[Brad Roberts]

On Thu, 15 May 2008, Dave wrote:

> "Jason House" <jason.james.house at gmail.com> wrote in message
> news:g0i5gi$sr2$1 at digitalmars.com...
> > I develop a multithreaded game-playing engine
> > http://housebot.sourceforge.net
> > Of critical importance to me is debugger integration, multithreaded support,
> > data visualization, full Tango compatibility, support for all gdc platforms,
> > and integrated profiling and unit test coverage analysis. I could see
> > spending $50 on something like that, but only if I know it will remain
> > useful.
> > 
> > An IDE stops being useful if I have to buy a new version with each D
> > release, or is close in functionality to free alternatives.
> > 
> 
> $50 for all that and a virtual life-time maintenance contract -- Wow, big
> spender!
> 
> Just because you give your software away doesn't mean the rest of us should
> <g>
> 
> This is a perfect example of how the open-source mentality stifles innovation
> - small development organizations can't make a buck off of software anymore,
> so why take the time to do it right ;)

The thread was seeking opinions, and Jason's is a perfectly valid one.  
He'd rather have a less superior IDE that's both free and kept current 
than one that costs more and isn't kept current or costs more to follow 
the evolution of the language.  Considering how fast the language evolves, 
that's a very real consideration.

Personally, I can't see a commercial IDE succeeding for D yet.  I'd 
certainly never dream of telling someone not to give it a whirl, of 
course.  That said, a paid eclipse based ide isn't likely to see a lot of 
adoption as long as there's two others being actively developed that are 
both free.

My two cents,
Brad