Lost a new commercial user this week :(

[Manu via Digitalmars-d]

On 17 December 2014 at 19:34, Dicebot via Digitalmars-d
<digitalmars-d at puremagic.com> wrote:
> On Wednesday, 17 December 2014 at 08:30:59 UTC, Manu via Digitalmars-d
> wrote:
>> Actually, I recommended it because I had had a positive experience
>> with vibe.d in the past. It seemed pretty solid.
>> Gotta start somewhere. I've had success promoting D to commercial
>> users in the past.
>
>
> Promoting to commercial users is indeed possible but one needs to explain
> risks and trade-offs straight. I wonder though how you have not noticed
> debugger issues before if there was some positive experience. There was
> nothing to debug? :)

I would never use exceptions. vibe.d uses exceptions extensively.
I have very little experience with exceptions in the debuggers.


>>> Idea that any D project can compete with node.js in "easy to jump in"
>>> domain
>>> is absolutely ridiculous. Attempting this is just dooming yourself to
>>> fail.
>>> Same is trying to advertise it is stable mature language - reality is it
>>> is
>>> simply not true and people will find out it sooner or later.
>>
>>
>> Sorry, maybe it wasn't clear, we never tried it out against node.js,
>> we tried it first, on my recommendation.
>> When it was rejected, someone else suggested to look at node.js. We
>> looked at that, it just worked.
>
>
> I mean that if "it just worked" was enough to make decision to use the
> node.js, then you didn't have any critical requirements that it fails to
> address (otherwise you would have looked for those first). Which means that
> pretty much any framework out there was suitable and ease of use was only
> truly important criteria.

Correct. Although as native programmers, we would have been much more
comfortable with an ecosystem we were familiar with given the choice.


> Interesting part starts when you say "yeah, it have just worked, BUT.." and
> start evaluating if ease development will be enough to compensate for
> certain architectural issues in the long term (budget-wise).

It's a fairly small project, that's why I promoted D in this context
in the first place.
I needed a small project to get people amongst it before we could
consider anything more ambitious.

It was just a good opportunity to get it into the company.


>> We didn't want any of those things from .js though. We're all
>> low-level/native coders.
>> We don't have time to debug language and library issues though. If we
>> didn't have tooling/library issues, we would have been perfectly happy
>> writing whatever code we needed to do our job.
>
>
> If developer time is more expensive than server time in your project, most
> likely there is no point in going for native languages even if you prefer
> those. Otherwise debugger issues and/or necessity to switch the OS
> environment would not have stopped you.

We are native programmers, we know how to write native code, and we
understand the ecosystem.
That's good reason enough.

It's true, there was no compelling reason to choose any technology in
particular other than familiarity or ease of development.
It just would have been nice to create a context in the company where
people could have a go at D.


>>> If there ever appears a game development company / community interested
>>> in
>>> _investing_ into programming language that would be totally different
>>> story
>>> but also irrelevant to enterprise culture you refer to.
>>
>>
>> So, in your world, D is a language for nerds (linux nerds at that!),
>> and not for serious productivity by enterprise?
>> Give me a break!
>
>
> Of course it is language for nerds. Do you see a paid developer team working
> on D? At least ONE paid developer? Maybe someone of existing commercial
> users pays for adding tools / features? It is not a product, it is not
> funded and can't be anything but language for nerds unless YOU start paying
> for the change.

Me? Personally?
Well Remedy kicked in quite substantially for dconf, but I think my
getting my company involved increases the chances for licensing and
monetisation than any amount I can donate from my own pocket...


> Which doesn't mean that it can be very productive language for serious
> projects. Nerds are pretty good at doing projects when there is no one from
> enterprise to create trouble. I think Sociomantic has proven quite strongly
> that such an attitude can work for successful business.
>
> To start using D effectively in production one needs to stop considering
> himself a customer. This is absolutely critical.

I am obviously personally capable of working around D's ecosystem
issues; I'm still here after 6 years.
What I am presenting here is an account on why my company rejected D,
despite a large number of staff being super excited and jazzed to try
it out.
I'd like to think there's something to learn from that.