Is D still alive?

[Steven Schveighoffer]

On Wed, 26 Jan 2011 14:25:10 -0500, Fab <fab-coding at web.de> wrote:

> Dear D community,
> My name is Fabian and I used to code C++ and Delphi. But a few month ago  
> I've
> got a book about D as a present. All in all D sounds very interesting  
> ... but
> - the "big" but - is D still alive?

Very much so.  D2 is being actively developed.  D1 is not, but Tango is  
being actively developed (which works with D1).

> Are there usable and stable GUI-Toolkits which are actually under  
> development?

I don't have personal experience with any of the current GUI projects, but  
 from what I've read, many of them are usable.  Whether they are actively  
developed, I'm not sure.

See many of them here: http://prowiki.org/wiki4d/wiki.cgi?GuiLibraries

> Are there any continued database projects?

AFAIK, there is very little DB support (which will definitely need to be  
addressed before D is considered a complete language) for D2.  However,  
you *always* have support via C bindings.  D has zero-overhead binding to  
C functions, all you need to do is port the declarations to D.

If you are using D1, there are several projects, I don't think many of  
them are up to date:

http://prowiki.org/wiki4d/wiki.cgi?DatabaseBindings

> So - is there any reason to change to D? I would ... I really would  
> change if
> there were more points than a nice language. I don't buy a good car if  
> it's to
> expensive - so: is D as precious as its pretend to be?

I will warn you, once you start using D, you will not want to use  
something else.  I cringe every day when I have to use PHP for work.

I would say it is not ready for prime-time yet.  It has a way to go, but  
some have managed to build pretty impressive applications from it.  So it  
would depend on your application.

-Steve