Lost a new commercial user this week :(

[Paulo Pinto via Digitalmars-d]

On Wednesday, 17 December 2014 at 09:05:58 UTC, Manu via 
Digitalmars-d wrote:
> 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!
>

This is something I also felt like when dabbled with D.

There is a lot of meta-programming going on the JVM and .NET 
worlds. Depending on the language, it comes via AST manipulation, 
attributes, compiler plugins, bytecode manipulation and macros.

However it tend to be used mostly for frameworks of some sort, 
not across all the APIs.

With the two toy projects I used D for, a toy compiler and a A* 
search implementation, I got the idea that there is a template 
for everything.

Granted, D's approach with templates and mixin makes it very easy 
to write such code.


--
Paulo