Poll of the week: main OS and compiler

[Brad Roberts]

On 3/2/2012 12:25 AM, Manu wrote:
> But we knew that already, because most of the D devs are linux guys, and D does not present a good experience to Windows
> users. I can personally point to numerous friends/colleagues who tried out D and turned away within a few hours because
> the Windows experience was so weak.
> Windows support should be prioritized BECAUSE Windows numbers are low, not because there's perceived to be no demand on
> that platform.

I'm fairly your assertion is incorrect, if by "d devs" you mean the guys that are building dmd/druntime/phobos.  I think
we actually have more contributors that are windows based than linux based.  At a minimum the numbers are well balanced,
not wildly lopsided towards linux.

No one has ever claimed that there's no demand for windows support.  What's been asserted is that it's easier to support
linux/bsd/osx.  And indeed that was backed up by how much time was spent on the platform specific parts vs the generic
parts while implementing 64 bit support.  Windows will get 64 bit support at some point.  That's not even a question.
What is a question is when, and there isn't a good answer for that right now.

There's a clear need to focus/prioritize limited resources.  It's not a hard choice to decide to defer spending many
months working on win64 and other platform specific support issues when there's still language level issues that cross
every platform.  That said, as always, if someone wants to scratch that itch and contribute to improving the windows
specific parts, help will be welcomed with open arms and lots of encouragement.

Later,
Brad