Website message overhaul

[Peter Alexander]

On 16/11/11 1:19 AM, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
> On 11/15/11 11:51 AM, Peter Alexander wrote:
>> I just feel like that page is desperately trying to sell D, rather than
>> just humbly introducing it and letting the language speak for itself.
>
> I don't think "letting the language speak for itself" works. People who
> are willing to get to that point are already interested. The challenge
> is having someone with only a fleeting curiosity get a quick overview of
> why they should become interested. We want to send a clear and crisp
> message about D. This is not about being humble vs. arrogant or whatnot.

By "letting the language speak for itself" I mean that we shouldn't 
resort to desperate sales pitches:

"Concurrency seems difficult? Fear no more." <-- cheesy sales pitch

"True immutable data, no sharing by default, and controlled mutable 
sharing across threads." <-- letting the language speak


>  From your message I distinguish eight keyphrases:
>
> - statically typed
> - natively compiled
> - type deduction
> - automatic memory management
> - C-family syntax
> - pragmatism
> - safety
> - powerful abstractions
>
> These are accurate, but eight is a lot of'em. How would you compress
> them in three powerful messages?

Why do we need three powerful messages? No other language website does 
that and I don't see why we should do it.

Short introduction (like the one I already posted) + tiny code sample.

import std.stdio;
void main()
{
     // 'line' statically deduced to string type
     foreach (line; File("text.txt").byLine())
         writeln(line);
}

That tiny code sample demonstrates:
- C-family syntax
- Static typing
- Type deduction
- Automatic memory management
- Powerful abstractions

The missing things could easily be stated in any short paragraph.