Marketing D [ was Re: GCC 4.6 ]

[Russel Winder]

On Sun, 2010-10-31 at 11:14 -0700, Walter Bright wrote:
[ . . . ]
> Yes, I know people just assume dmd doesn't do things because it is a small team. 
[ . . . ]
> Where the large teams pay off, though, is the breadth of the offering.

I appreciate this is going off topic somewhat for the list, never mind
the original posting, but I think summarizing this issue should be
constructive -- albeit me seemingly acting as Devil's Advocate.  (NB
This is not a troll, for me these are serious issues -- I am a
consultant and therefore whilst I do no significant development on big
projects, I advise influencers and decision makers.)

The marketing problem for D, at least as it impinges on me, is that it
is "Walter's language with Andrei helping out".  No matter that this may
be an unfair and incorrect representation of reality overall, it is
nonetheless what the project management and CTO/CIO community perceive
of D, if they have heard of it at all.

Let us assume the competition that D aims at is C, C++ and Go.  I think
we can ignore the VM-based community for now in this as they are either
C/C++/Python/Lua or Java/Scala/Groovy/Clojure/C/C++ centred with little
chance of looking for alternatives.  Where the "native code" and
"virtual machine" communities have overlap, it is generally handled by
build, usually using SCons, Waf, or some home-grown equivalent.

C and C++ have international standards, multiple compliant (!)
realizations, huge vendor support, a long history, and much tooling.  Go
has Google behind it.

D is perceived as a collection of "one-man band" bits with a few
hangers-on.  In this light, there is no way for D to have any traction,
even if it is technically a better language than any of the actual
competition.

In order to get the ability to get traction, I see two main ways
forward:

1.  A big company gets involved and provides resources to ramp up on the
productization of the end-to-end toolchain and library support -- so all
of IDE support Qt, GTK libraries, etc. -- and gets some seriously
high-profile projects using D.

2.  The project goes fully open source with a core of 5 or 6 people,
supported by employers or via some form of sponsorship, actively working
nigh on full time to ramp up on the productization of the end-to-end
toolchain and library support -- so all of IDE support Qt, GTK
libraries, etc. -- and gets some seriously high-profile projects using
D.

Over the roughly four to five years I have known about D very little has
seemed to change in the organization and marketing of the language and
its development.  The technical quality is there, the intention is
there, but the realization of the dream has had no constructive effort.
The ACCU conference has a couple of talks on or mentioning D each year,
but there is nothing in between, There seems to be no "D buzz", even in
London.  Compare this to the "buzz" in London about Go.  Not to mention
the continued interest and "buzz" around C, C++, Java, Scala, Clojure,
etc.

Some (arguably rhetorical) questions:

--  Why did Google push Go rather than use D when they became
dissatisfied with C, C++, etc.

--  Can D be used for the native clients in the web applications arena
that seem to be coming, cf. Go's NaCl.

--  Why don't ThoughtWorks use Go and D, but push Clojure and Ruby?

--  How come no recruitment agent cares about D experience (or lack of
it)?

--  What will make companies take the risk and use D for a project
instead of C++?  Or put another way why do companies just use C and C++
even ion the face of better alternatives?

Actually I know the answers to the last two and they have no basis in
technical issues.

Having already written half an essay, I think I will leave it there.  I
really would like to see D get some serious traction, but to be honest
with the way things have and continue to go, I have doubts.  Can I be
proved wrong?

-- 
Russel.
=============================================================================
Dr Russel Winder      t: +44 20 7585 2200   voip: sip:russel.winder at ekiga.net
41 Buckmaster Road    m: +44 7770 465 077   xmpp: russel at russel.org.uk
London SW11 1EN, UK   w: www.russel.org.uk  skype: russel_winder
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