What is the D plan's to become a used language?

[Laeeth Isharc via Digitalmars-d]

On Friday, 19 December 2014 at 00:21:06 UTC, H. S. Teoh via 
Digitalmars-d wrote:
> On Thu, Dec 18, 2014 at 08:12:07PM +0000, Laeeth Isharc via 
> Digitalmars-d wrote:
> [...]
>> - better reference documentation.  I don't believe I lack the 
>> ability generally to figure things out, but the dlang.org 
>> library reference is far from being utterly clear if you don't 
>> start from a place of
>> understanding the language and its concepts.  once you get the 
>> spirit of it, it all makes sense, but modern people don't tend 
>> to be
>> distinguished by their grit and many will give up first.
>
> Please file documentation enhancement bugs in bugzilla.  I do 
> try to work on improving documentation when I have the time, 
> but if nobody points out a possible improvement, I might never 
> think of it (or it might take a long time before I notice it, 
> esp. if I rarely use that module!). I'm sure others who browse 
> bugzilla from time to time will also appreciate having 
> documentation bugs to work on -- since they're generally the 
> lowest-hanging fruit that even most newbies should be able to 
> contribute to.

I will register an account now, and try to make a start in the 
coming months.


>> - better worked examples.  python is outstanding for this.  
>> you can figure out how to do anything by looking at someone 
>> else's example.
>> of course there isn't presently the support for this, and I 
>> recognize that one attracts a different kind of person when it 
>> becomes easy to learn a language.  but such is the price of 
>> maturity.
>
> Please file doc enhancement requests for these too. :-) A lot 
> of Phobos documentation is unfortunately quite lacking in good 
> examples. I've done a few of them, but generally, having a 
> bugzilla issue for it is much better, because I may already 
> know function X like the back of my hand and so never notice 
> that the examples aren't that good, whereas if a newbie pointed 
> out that the examples for X are unclear, then I'd know there's 
> an issue and look into how to explain X better.

Will start keeping track and try to write some points up when I 
have a few of them.  It's often just the absence of anything more 
than a few lines.  Now I have spent some time with D, it becomes 
easier - and one can just go read the source.  But some people 
will be put off by that.  There is a benefit from having a toll 
to enter too, but probably in the long run D's destiny cannot be 
to remain a tool solely for those with good taste, courage, and 
perseverance ;)

One should be patient with oneself about where one starts from, 
and it may well be that this is the least of anyone's concerns 
for the time being, but it might be something to work towards, 
step by step, over time.

Some simple examples for python:
http://python.readthedocs.org/en/latest/howto/urllib2.html
https://wiki.python.org/moin/HowTo/Sorting
[compare the above with the rather terse docs on std.algorithm, 
which are the only ones that come up that I can see when doing a 
search on dlang.org for sorting]

If D wants to be purely a systems language then people who can't 
figure it out for themselves should stick with something better 
suited to them - we all have limitations.  But I think what D 
intrinsically wants to be (just as an acorn wants to be an oak) 
is rather broader in scope, and if true that may  mean the 
ecosystem needs to grow in a different way to permit that.

I met the global head of derivatives research for a big 
investment bank in London for a coffee the other day.  He knew of 
D and a bit about it.  Right now they use mostly python.  He is 
interested, but he has a lot on his plate and not enough people.  
Beyond wanting more along the lines of the links above, it would 
be nice to be able to point him to a few tutorials that show here 
is how you use D to do certain basic business processes.  Like 
grabbing data from Fed web site, parsing, storing in HDF5 etc.  
And in other fields it must be similar.  You want to be able to 
tell your guy - here kid, you're a smart kid and our processes 
are too slow - go and take a look at this D thing and see if we 
can do something with it.  That's easier with more fleshed out 
use cases (Adam's stuff comes to mind).

I am musing aloud more than suggesting anything specific.  I will 
try to start contributing a bit, although limited by time and 
frankly experience of D.


Laeeth