Python vs D [ was Re: Bartosz about Chapel ]

[Paulo Pinto]

Quite right.

On 11.11.2011 10:14, Russel Winder wrote:
> On Thu, 2011-11-10 at 21:06 -0600, Caligo wrote:
> [...]
>> That's like going back 20 years and telling Linus "without a properly
>> financed and orchestrated marketing campaign to push Linux out there..." ,
>> you get my drift.
>
> No I don't, but I think you are trivializing my point by trying to make
> it appear spurious.
>
> Linux only really became popular due to distributions such as Red Hat,
> Debian, Slackware, etc.  Resources were pumped into them to make them
> work.  Not direct financing and marketing but indirect financing and
> marketing.  The Red Hat and Debian campaigns have clearly been
> successful -- even though Linux has a trivial install base compared to
> Windows on client machines, it dominates on server machines (and is the
> only OS on my equipment of any sort).
>
>> Money and marketing are important, specially when you are developing
>> a proprietary system.  You can have a shit product, but with enough
>> marketing you can make people believe it's not shit; Microsoft has done it,
>> same with Sun and Java.
>
> I won't disagree with you on Microsoft.  Nor in it's latter days Sun's
> business strategy. Java is a different matter.  It has problems, but it
> has undoubtedly revolutionized software.  Java is a waning language just
> now, though Java 8, if it comes soon and gets it right, could revitalize
> it.  But Java per se is not real issue, it is the JVM that is a core
> product of future software.  Groovy, Scala, JRuby, Jython, Clojure,
> Fantom, Ceylon, Mirah, Kotlin,...  The JVM-sphere is a melting pot of
> enthusiasm, gentle (but sometimes otherwise, sadly) competition, and a
> huge and positive desire to succeed.  Backed up by a lot of direct and
> indirect resourcing that allows things to happen without the stress of
> relying only on volunteer labour.
>
> Clearly there are static and dynamic languages here.  For the dynamic
> languages the main thrust of marketing is the line "more expressive than
> Java, interworks with Java and the libraries, gives you a runtime MOP".
> For the static languages the general line is "less verbose than Java,
> more expressive than Java, interworks with Java, can gradually replace
> Java".
>
> The core strategy has not been to argue for throwing Java out but much
> more for keeping what there is but side-lining Java as a future
> development language.
>
> Turning to the Fortran, C, Go, C++, D end of things, all arguments are
> "replace do not interwork".  Go is the classic example of this.  Trying
> to use C written libraries from Go is painful, so there is a huge effort
> to effectively replace all the C and C++ infrastructure code out there
> with Go infrastructure.  With the direct and indirect resources from
> Google and others this is happening, and at a phenomenal rate.
>
> Although D can interwork with C and C++ written libraries, the
> perception of those out there who are not directly part of the D
> community, is the D is a language for revolutionary replacement of C++
> rather than evolutionary replacement of C++, i.e. C++/D is an one or the
> other choice.  No matter how wrong this might be, it is the perception,
> and that is what matters.
>
>> If D fails, it's not because of lack of money or marketing, but because of
>> lack of a healthy and growing community.  A healthy community is what all
>> successful open source projects have in common.  Moving to Github was a
>> step in the right direction, but it's not enough, and the people in charge
>> don't seem to have a clue as to how to build a community.  How many new
>> developers have joined the development of D/Phobos in the last year?  I bet
>> very few.  They haven't even fixed the link to that old site, and it's been
>> like that for far too long.
>
> I say it is not that black and white.  A healthy, vibrant, expanding
> community is a precursor to success.  Ruby saw this, Groovy saw this.
> You also need a successful showcase (I refuse to use the term "killer
> app" as that has all the wrong connotations).  Ruby had Rails, Groovy
> had Grails.  The you need the non-volunteer resources to continue the
> drive into the mainstream.  Ruby attracted the entrepreneurs, spawned
> GitHub, Heroku, etc.  Groovy attracted SpringSource, BSkyB, and got
> recognized as core enterprise toolkit.
>
> Only when the resources got put into things did the phase change from
> peripheral to core happen.  D is currently a potential waiting for a
> resourcing.  It needs a showcase.
>
>> Where is "D/Phobos Developer's Guide" page?
>
> Perhaps more importantly, where is the material showing C and C++
> programmers how they can start writing D in their current systems and
> slowly move to D in an incremental way to great benefit in development
> speed with no loss of performance?
>
> Scala, Ceylon, Kotlin, etc. will succeed exactly because they offer
> things not in Java and yet systems can be written in a mix of any and
> all of the languages.
>
> Groovy, JRuby, Jython, etc. are succeeding because they offer forms of
> expression not available in static langauges and yet can interwork with
> all the languages that sit on the JVM.
>
> D has to do this with C and C++ so as to be able to be used in an
> incremental and insurgent way.
>