D popularity

[Rob T]

On Sunday, 20 January 2013 at 09:52:42 UTC, SaltySugar wrote:
> Why it isn't popular?  We must popularize it. There aren't any 
> tutorials with D, books and other stuff. How about writing a D 
> programming forum?

I don't think the problem is purely a technical one as some may 
be suggesting. For example, even if all the technical issues were 
resolved, I doubt usage will increase much faster than they 
currently are. It won't hurt to make things 100% production 
ready, but I doubt that's the biggest hurdle to overcome.

With mountains of investment in existing C/C++ infrastructure, 
who is going to make the leap to D? The cost of switching must be 
far less than the cost of not switching.

I also figure a lot of people remain perfectly content with 
C/C++, and will never consider changing to something else simply 
because they don't have a significant enough reason to look for a 
better alternative. Even if there are a lot of dissatisfied C/C++ 
programmers, I bet most of them don't even know that there's a 
viable alternative. As far as I know, aside from D, there's 
nothing else that can replace C/C++, except maybe Rust, but it's 
still an experiment not suitable for production use, so the 
perception may be that using C/C++ is the only choice you have.

One possible way to get programmers to at least begin considering 
D, is to expose them to D through useful applications that are 
written in D that can be interfaced directly to C/C++. D has a 
compatible ABI, but in this case there is a technical problem to 
overcome, and it's with D's inability to support dynamic linking 
fully.

If we're to develop tactics for popularizing D, we have to 
consider more than technical issues, and when considering 
technical issues, we have to carefully choose the problem areas 
that are likely to matter the most.

Unfortunately, we don't have a coordinated action plan, and 
everything proceeds in a more or less random way. So I'd say 
improving the way D is developed through better coordination is 
the best way to achieve more rapid progress.

For those who prefer random chaos to guide the way, nothing stops 
that from continuing, you can have both an organized system in 
place, and a chaotic one at the same time.

--rt