Why I'm hesitating to switch to D

[Ary Manzana]

On 6/29/11 6:25 PM, Walter Bright wrote:
> On 6/29/2011 1:38 AM, James Fisher wrote:
>> However, the case for using
>> it for the website
>> <https://github.com/D-Programming-Language/d-programming-language.org/blob/master/index.dd>
>>
>> is nonexistent (anyone disagree?).
>
> I do. Ddoc is:
>
> 1. Rather trivial to learn & use. A website/book/community devoted to
> how to use it is completely unnecessary. It's fairly obvious how to use
> it (for someone with a basic familiarity with HTML) by simply looking at
> a couple examples.

But you have to learn it nonetheless.

>
> 2. It automatically tracks the D language, so D code examples are always
> properly highlighted.

There are many tools to syntax highlight code using HTML. Making the 
compiler (or some part of it) do it is... hmmm... it's not the 
compiler's job!

Come on, it's not that hard to highlight with an external javascript 
(Nick Sabalausky, please no comments :-P :-))

>
> 3. It is always available and installed for anyone who installs D.

Fair.

>
> 4. The D compiler and Ddoc are always in sync. No begging for updates
> from 3rd parties, no lags even if they get right on incorporating
> necessary updates.

More job for you and your team, having to keep that in sync. And when D 
becomes more popular I'm sure someone else will write a better ddoc, or 
better ddocs, so why spend effort and time doing it in-sync with the 
compiler?

>
> 5. It is not necessary to direct anyone to install some third party
> system that may not even exist on all the platforms D does. In general,
> we try to minimize dependency on things that are not default installed
> across operating systems.
>
> 6. And lastly, it works, it delivers, and has for many years. It's
> proven its worth.
>
>
> If a professional web designer uses famous system X to develop with, and
> if we used famous system Y, it's just as much a barrier for him to
> relearn how to do things with Y as it is to learn Ddoc.
>
> Please don't be too dismissive of the productivity gains from using
> Ddoc. At the time we started using it, the website and the Phobos
> documentation improved by huge leaps and bounds, simply because it was
> so easy to generate decent documentation with Ddoc.

As someone else pointed out, the documentation for Phobos (or any 
library) could be in a different subdomain without having to deal with 
the main website styles or antyhing. And you can do the main website 
with another framework.