Why I chose D over Ada and Eiffel

[Chris]

On Monday, 26 August 2013 at 18:33:55 UTC, Zach the Mystic wrote:
> On Monday, 26 August 2013 at 09:29:18 UTC, Chris wrote:
>> I don't agree. I first used D exactly because it is an 
>> "all-rounder". For me built-in UTF support was as important a 
>> factor as native machine code (performance). The reasons why 
>> people would perfer C++ to D are probably habit and 
>> convenience. If you've used C++ for years why should you 
>> bother to learn D? After all, C++ is well established, 
>> well-documented, has loads of libraries, will get you a job 
>> more eaily etc. Language features and performance are 
>> sometimes over-estimated when it comes to analyzing why a 
>> language succeeded. There's convenience, marketing 
>> (propaganda) etc etc.
>>
>> Also I don't think that performance alone decides whether a 
>> language becomes popular or not. If it were soley down to 
>> performance we wouldn't have Java or Python or even 
>> Objective-C (which used to be criticized for being too slow). 
>> Ease of use, a clear and consistent structure and "write once 
>> run everywhere" are very important too. Especially now that 
>> developers have to face so many different platforms (Linux, 
>> Mac, Windows, Android, iOS) everythnig goes into the direction 
>> of "write once ..." That's one of the reasons why Android took 
>> off, I think, because developers said "Great, maybe this will 
>> put an end to the mobile platform jungle. We'll support 
>> Android, less headaches for us!".
>
> I'm trying to analyze the problem from a strategic point of 
> view. For this, I like to invoke the Serenity Prayer (please 
> forgive any distasteful theology):
>
> "God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot 
> change,
> The courage to change the things I can,
> And wisdom to know the difference."
>
> So yeah, you can't control people's choices. The question is, 
> of the things which *can* be done, is it better to focus on 
> well-roundedness, or to press an advantage where one is already 
> ahead of the pack? Which will lead to greater adoption of the 
> language?
>
> One thing about performance in particular is that it's easy to 
> measure and easy for the naive person to understand what it is. 
> So there is perhaps a risk of being seduced into sacrificing 
> other things which are more subtle, but equally important, in 
> favor of winning at performance. Yet I think the key point is 
> that that's not going to happen here. I personally have too 
> much respect for the engineers working on this thing to think 
> they would be that short-sighted.
>
> But if it's *possible* to grab a performance trophy while still 
> keeping the other flocks well-fed, it seems like a clear 
> strategic win.

Yes and no. I've actually given up pointing out language features 
or even performance to people. Believe it or not, but usually the 
first questions are things like "Does it have libraries? If it 
doesn't have a sound library I will not use it ..." And if 
someone is a die-hard D-hater s/he will always find something 
like "D doesn't support multi-sync-runtime-polymorphy on reversed 
backtracking array slicing, so it's useless! C# will have it 
soon!"

I think being an all-rounder is a good approach, you can use it 
for small script-like projects and big projects with unit tests, 
component programming etc. So as people ask about features, you 
just keep ticking the boxes. But if you start to point out one 
feature in particular, you're going down the slippery road of 
bit-by-bit language comparison, which will lead you nowhere.

I think it would help a lot if we had a "Made with D" list, 
especially if there are some killer apps or games and the like.