Lost a new commercial user this week :(

[Joakim via Digitalmars-d]

Thanks for the feedback.

On Sunday, 14 December 2014 at 08:37:36 UTC, Manu via 
Digitalmars-d wrote:
> We were unable to build Win64 code (vibe.d doesn't support 
> Win64 it
> seems), and the 32bit compiler produces useless OMF output. We
> couldn't link against any of our existing code which was a 
> serious
> inconvenience, but they were understanding and we worked around 
> it.

Did you try the new 32-bit COFF support in dmd from git?

> The result was a bunch of die-hard native C programmers, 
> initially
> excited to use a native language to write a webserver, instead 
> saying
> stuff like "wow, node.js just worked! that's amazing, 
> javascript is
> awesome!"... and then mocking me about my D language thing.

"die-hard native C programmers" who are fine with javascript?  Is 
it one or two orders of magnitude slower than vibe.d? ;) I know 
v8 is fast for javascript, but it has to be significantly slower 
than C and D.

> What's the take-away here? Well, like I've been saying 
> endlessly for
> years now, *first impressions matter*, and quality of tooling 
> matters
> more than anything.
---snip---
> I want to see flawless debugging put on the road map as top 
> priority.
> We need a test environment for the windows installer and VS
> integration that is thorough and that we can depend on.
> It's 10 years overdue. We need to get this practical shit 
> together if
> people are going to take D seriously!
---snip---
> One of the take-away quotes I think, was "D seems to be a 
> language for
> people who actively want to go and look for it, and take the 
> time to
> learn it. That's never going to be a commercial success."
> It's painful to accept the truth in that statement. Go and try 
> and
> learn any other trendy language today. The homepage looks 
> modern,
> there has been professional design, testing, and there are
> instructional videos recorded by a professional voice actor 
> with that
> trendy bloody upbeat ukulele music in the background that's in 
> all
> tech videos these days...

There has never been a successful open source project without 
significant commercial support, going from linux to perl on down 
the line.  D's commercial support consists of some Facebook 
bounties, Sociomantic throwing out huge pulls occasionally that 
never get merged, and companies like EMSI chipping in where they 
can.  D will never have "commercial success" through the higher 
quality tooling and presentation you are calling for without more 
significant commercial involvement to fund it, period.

Right now, D is bleeding-edge technology.  You have to know how 
to stay away from the chipper blades of the D chainsaw or it 
could cut your arm open and you could bleed out.  Not a problem 
for hobbyists, but a big problem for companies, who are used to 
all the rough edges being sanded down and paying through the nose 
for such support.  If decision-makers at companies are hoping to 
get such polished work for free from a volunteer-oriented OSS 
project, they should have their heads examined.

On Sunday, 14 December 2014 at 09:13:20 UTC, Rikki Cattermole 
wrote:
> Great example, how about separating out Walters website from 
> D's? Or one Google indexed web interface to the news group.

Great idea, I mentioned this before and nothing was done:

http://forum.dlang.org/post/lqpwiaqeyartbsokdlnt@forum.dlang.org

What's especially embarrassing is the old web archive will often 
garble posts and render them unreadable.