End user experience with D

[H. S. Teoh]

On Mon, Sep 02, 2013 at 12:21:08AM +0200, Ramon wrote:
[...]
> D's bias toward Windows doesn't help either.
[...]

I'm confused by this statement. I don't do development on Windows
either, but my impression during the time I've been around here is that
Windows support is actually lagging behind Linux. It was only very
recently that we got 64-bit support on Windows. And optlink often comes
up as a nagging point (along with COFF vs. whatever it is the other
format is called), but Linux users use the system linker and never have
this problem.

So, all things considered, it would appear to me rather that D is more
biased towards Linux. :)

As for the whole "need better IDE support" issue, I think it's the same
with every other issue that has come up in the D community: it takes
*somebody* to champion the cause and do whatever it takes to make it
happen. Like Andrei with Phobos, Iain with GDC, Don with CTFE, etc..
Being an opensource community, the dynamics here are rather different
from, say, a corporate-backed language: what somebody cares about enough
to do something about it, is what gets implemented and supported.
Dictating that people work on feature X, or officially declaring support
for feature X, generally doesn't have very much actual effect. The core
devs have enough on their hands already (too much, in fact -- Phobos
pulls, for example, need much more manpower to review so that turnaround
time isn't as slow as it currently is). What is needed is *somebody*
from the community with the urge to do something about it, to go ahead
and do it, and then submit the pull requests, etc., to get it
integrated. I'm sure Walter & co will be more than happy to merge such
requests.


T

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