Focus

[Russel Winder]

On Fri, 2013-01-18 at 21:21 +0100, bearophile wrote:
[…]
> If that's an optimization, and most people are going to use LDC 
> or GDC in future, why is Walter working on that stuff?

Working on a separate backend is fine if that is what people want to do.
I think though that unless D sits on GCC or LLVM it will get no
traction.  D has been going for 10 years now and is still a tiny niche
language that large organization don't consider given C and C++. Riding
on GCC and LLVM and being everywhere that gcc, g++ and clang are is a
step to allowing D to be used by people not in this mailing list related
community.

This D development community should put effort into making GDC and LDC
the primary D tools, ensuring that the latest D version is always
shipped on Mac OS X (macports, brew, DMG installer,…) and in every Linux
distro that has market presence ­– which effectively means Debian and
Fedora since all distros with presence build on them – as well as
Windows (which bizarrely remains the major platform for software
development).

This is not something it has to be left to Walter to do unless D is to
remain a 1-man band, in which case it will never get real traction: any
toolchain which even remotely looks like a one-man band has no chance of
getting real traction.

> Also do you know why Walter is working still on D1? Isn't D1 code 
> going to be deleted, to have a purely D2 code on GitHub?

Having declared D1 dead as of 2012-12-31 and issued a final release, any
and all work on D1 is counterproductive. But on the other hand Walter is
not an employee of the D development team (**).

> Currently there are 118 open pull requests:
> https://github.com/D-Programming-Language/dmd/pulls
> 
> Maybe (probably) not every one of them is good, but among them 
> there is lot of stuff I've asked in bug reports and enhancement 
> requests, thanks to Hara and others. If 50% of the biggest pull 
> requests of those 118 gets pulled, the D language will feel 
> almost as a new thing.

Anyone and everyone can work on these bug reports. The problem is that D
need a few people, not just one, to be paid in some way to work of the D
system.  Whilst all effort is basically on a volunteer basis then the
project will just trundle along going nowhere.

D needs some big users who put resource into development either in terms
of cash to get contractors to do work, or by putting staff members onto
the project for some or all of their time. Only with commitment of
resource from user organizations will the project actually go anywhere.

> Also, I don't agree a lot about the "fog of war" theory by 
> Walter. I think a development plan should be discussed, written 
> down, and then followed (and dynamically fixed, when necessary). 
> Building a new system language has a high risk of failure, but 
> there's no need to also shot D in the feet on purpose.

I am not sure what this theory is but it sounds akin to "let the product
be an emergent property of chaotic behaviour".

It strikes me that the DConf 2013 shouldn't be just a friendly get
together to share some D knowledge. This conference should be the
meeting that kicks off the programme of D's ascendency into the realms
of actually being used seriously.

1.  It needs to be clear that D is no longer Walter's baby/toy/… that
only he can work on.

2. There needs to be a roadmap of creating a language spec, a test suite
for all the features, and a programme for any future features and how
they will be implemented.

3. A marketing programme to get D known about and used. This hinges on
successful projects so an objective would be to get an up to date list
of products, both small and large, that rely on D and why they use D and
not C, C++, Java, Scala, etc.

4. Networking to find organizations who may be able to put real resource
into the D infrastructure and libraries.

5. Find a big organizational champion (*).

If the D world is after DConf 2013 fundamentally the same as the D world
has been before DConf 2013 then the project is going nowhere and the
only recourse will be to fighting with C++, Go, Rust, Clay, etc.  DConf
2013 has to be treated as a watershed moving D from the 10 year cycle of
creation into the infinite cycle of use.

(*) Groovy managed to use a 6 year rather than 10 cycle to real
usability, but it was only when SpringSource bought G2One and started
putting resource into Groovy that it really took off. With Canoo backing
it and one or two USA consultancies, it rapidly became the dynamic
language of choice and actual use on the JVM.  The similarities between
D evolution and Groovy evolution are quite interesting (**). Groovy has
made the jump to organizational respectability. D needs to do the same.

(**) Groovy had a development team crisis/explosion/implosion not
dissimilar to the Tango/Phobos situation. But the Groovy team moved on.
It seems the D situation has become history and people have moved on.
The crucial difference is that the Groovy team started looking outwards
from the language as much as looking at the development of the language.
The D community needs to look out towards use of the language out there
rather than just the language infrastructure. Vibe.d is something
Twitter and G+ should be full of.  Should there be effort of graphics
bindings? Network bindings, etc. But what are the applications using
these? That is where the real traction stems from.

-- 
Russel.
=============================================================================
Dr Russel Winder      t: +44 20 7585 2200   voip: sip:russel.winder at ekiga.net
41 Buckmaster Road    m: +44 7770 465 077   xmpp: russel at winder.org.uk
London SW11 1EN, UK   w: www.russel.org.uk  skype: russel_winder
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