too early for D2 and too late for D1

[Andrew Wiley]

On Sun, Apr 17, 2011 at 4:37 AM, Gour-Gadadhara Dasa <gour at atmarama.net> wrote:
>
> Hello!
>
> My first post to this newsgroup was a little bit more than 6 months ago
> and today I've decided to leave D and use C(P)ython + Qt for our
> open-source project of writing multi-platform desktop application.
>
> The D community is very nice and supportive, Walter, Andrei & co. are
> working hard, but, imho, D is not ready (yet).
>
> Recently, after switching from Linux to (Free)PC-BSD I even lost
> ability to have working compiler on x86_64 (none of the compilers is
> available in ports).

Frankly, if your definition of "not ready" is that the compiler isn't
packaged for you, D isn't the right community to begin with.

> The crucial thing is that D's ecosystem is simply
> not ready for day-to-day GUI programming and there is no clear roadmap
> so that one can anticipate when to expect that something will be done.

The problem with ecosystems is that there is never a roadmap unless
your development follows the Microsoft model, where everything is
benevolently dictated. That works, but D isn't Microsoft.
>
> Let me say, that I really like what D has on its plate, but language
> needs libraries to be successful, otherwise it is only promise-land.

D has libraries, it's just a matter of downloading, building, and
reporting bugs rather than installing, reading a book, and firing up
the UI designer. They're rough, but they're there.
>
> I've become tired for programming language's ecosystem to become
> mature...waited too long with Haskell and arrived to D hoping it is
> more pragmatic for day-to-day usage, but the situation seems even
> worse...Yeah, I know...I arrived at the wrong time during D1 --> D2
> transition...
>
> That's, why I believe that the mantra in the subject, which I coined
> in IRC the other day, holds true.
>
> I'm thankful to all the members of this group for every piece of
> advice and input I received, as well to Andrei (his book is on my
> shelf - I even put it in the hardcover), but I want to code my project
> *today*, have plenty of (GUI) choices, lot of docs, tools and clear
> roadmap where the certain projects are going.
>
> I hope I might re-evaluate D2 sometime in the future for some other
> project...
>

I'm (and I think I can say we're) sad to see you go, and hopefully
you'll look to D in the future, but in the present, choose the right
tool for the job. It's unwise to do anything else.
(Unless you're a college student with too much time on his hands, but
I'm pretty sure that's not your situation)