The Next Big Language

[JMRyan]

Andrei Alexandrescu <SeeWebsiteForEmail at erdani.org> wrote in
news:i9f442$2bl$1 at digitalmars.com: 

> Discusses a few languages including D: 
> http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/dsdd6/the_next_big_languag
> e_2010_edition/ 
> 
> Andrei

Call me a curmudgeon, but I don't like Next Big Thing discussions.  The
problem is worse in applications than in programming languages, but I
have learned to detest all such discussions.  Software users, software
reviewers (they're the worst) and even programmers look at Lotus 123
with dollar signs in their eyes and assume that a world of hundreds of
millions of computers isn't big enough for any options other than The
One True Big Thing. 

I posted a little rant about this on some newsgroup during The Great
Browser Wars.  Complaining about the attitude that the world wasn't big
enough for two browsers, I noted that the world was plenty big enough
for quite a few makes and models of cars.  If the software reviewers of
the day had worked for a car mag, they would have written about what was
The One Best luxury/sports/enconobox/muscle/lots of cargo/lots of
passengers/off road use/etc. car.  I got two replies.  One said "But IE
is indeed better than Netscape" and the other asked "But what about the
[whatever car it was] that fits into all these categories".  I had to go
to the gym and spend some time on the heavy bag to work out my
frustrations. 

All of this strikes me as silly as wars over The One True Placement of
Curly Braces and The One Best Text Editor.  I just want D to be popular
enough to give a nice set of useful libraries to work with.