Lost a new commercial user this week :(

[Manu via Digitalmars-d]

On 16 December 2014 at 00:04, Kagamin via Digitalmars-d
<digitalmars-d at puremagic.com> wrote:
> On Sunday, 14 December 2014 at 08:37:36 UTC, Manu via Digitalmars-d wrote:
>>
>> They then made HUGE noises about the quality of documentation. The
>> prevailing opinion was that the D docs, in the eyes of a
>> not-a-D-expert, are basically unreadable to them. The formatting
>> didn't help, there's a lot of noise and a lack of structure in the
>> documentation's presentation that makes it hard to see the information
>> through the layout and noise. As senior software engineers, they
>> basically expected that they should be able to read and understand the
>> docs, even if they don't really know the language, after all, "what is
>> the point of documentation if not to teach the language..."
>> I tend to agree, I find that I can learn most languages to a basic
>> level by skimming the docs, but the D docs are an anomaly in this way;
>> it seems you have to already know D to be able to understand it
>> effectively. They didn't know javascript either, but skimming the
>> node.js docs they got the job done in an hour or so, after having
>> wasted *2 days* trying to force their way through the various
>> frictions presented but their initial experience with D.
>
>
> Comparing node.js to D? You probably speak about vibe, not D?

The majority of hours spent were not really related to vibe.d so much
as trying to wrangle the tooling, debugging crashes, and understand
the docs to get some very basic things done.
These are 'D' experience if you ask me.


>> 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."
>
>
> O_O Huh? Your team really didn't learn C++?

We didn't 'learn' javascript, or python, or html, or whatever else you
pick up on the job.
The investment in learning 'programming' is decades behind us, and I
think it's a reasonable expectation that a language present itself in
such a way that it's intuitive and easy to get some basic things
going.
Leveraging small example snippets from the docs, etc. D is very easy
for a C/C++ programmer, but the docs don't make it appear that way,
and they give the wrong impression.
The overpowering presence of templates in the docs give a first
impression that reminds people of everything that's wrong with C++,
which I suspect most C++ programmers looking into D are actively
trying to escape!

There simply can't be friction on step 1! There can be friction on
step 4 or 5 when you've already made some minor achievements, and have
a good few hours invested.
Any friction on step 1 or 2 will lead to an almost immediate rejection.