Lost a new commercial user this week :(

Manu via Digitalmars-d digitalmars-d at puremagic.com
Fri Dec 19 23:26:16 PST 2014


On 19 December 2014 at 20:47, Sergei Nosov via Digitalmars-d
<digitalmars-d at puremagic.com> wrote:
> On Friday, 19 December 2014 at 08:57:56 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:
>>
>> I've debugged a lot of D code with no debugger at all (how else could I
>> port it to various platforms like Win64?).
>>
>> I've actually not found debuggers to be of much use other than telling me
>> where the seg fault was and giving a stack trace.
>
>
> I think the most valuable point Manu made is that there are "excellent" and
> "good" programmers. The difference is not so much in the actual skills, but
> in the willing to spend time on programming.
>
> "Excellent programmers" spend a great amount of time learning things. It
> takes a huge part of their free time and it really takes a lot of passion
> and diligence. But most of the professional programmers are simply "good".
> They code at work and that's it. They don't spend any time beyond that on
> programming and, especially, learning new things.
>
> If we're speaking about "excellent programmers" category, then almost
> everything about D is already good enough for these people. You can tell it
> by a number of truly fascinating D projects.
>
> And it looks like the guys who work on D are mostly "excellent programmers",
> which speak pretty different language compared to the "good programmers".
> Probably, this is the main cause of misunderstanding.
>
> In the "debugger" case, Manu's point is that it's unusable. And Walter's
> implied point is "debuggers aren't that useful anyway, so why it was a
> showstopper?".
>
> My personal observation is that "excellent programmers" share the Walter's
> point on debuggers - they practically don't use it. And the uselessness is
> so obvious, that there's nothing even to talk about. At the same time, "good
> programmers" use it extensively, especially on Windows. It is so useful to
> them, that there's nothing even to talk about!
>
> So, Manu speaks from the "good programmer" position, and Walter speaks from
> the "excellent programmer" position, implying "if you'd become a better
> programmer, you wouldn't have no problems using D".
>
> This implication is mostly true. But it's orthogonal to Manu's point - "good
> programmers" have troubles using D.
>
> The probable solution to this is to attract some "good" programmers to point
> out and work on the aforementioned issues - site, documentation, tooling,
> etc. But I'm not sure it's possible to do this for D with volunteer efforts.

Thank you.

I get so frustrated by the apparent majority in this forum who seem to
think 'most' programmers are the type who would even read or post on a
forum like this. Or read a programming book! They must surely be the
overwhelming minority.
In my experience, that is, large companies, probably somewhere around
500 colleagues in almost 15 years, is that 90% of them are 'good' at
best. Nothing will be successful unless that silent majority can get
on board... and they will NOT exert any particular effort to do so,
unless it clearly advantages them somehow and/or the friction is
minimal.

D is a great language for enthusiasts, obviously. Andrei often talks
about a 7 digit userbase; he's presented on this in lectures. I don't
think think that number is even remotely possible unless we are able
to attract an overwhelming majority of 'average' to 'good'
programmers. I doubt there are that many 'excellent' programmers in
the world!
In my experience to date (presenting D to corporate colleagues, of
which is quite extensive), the main barrier remaining is
presentation... and for my particular user-base, rough edges in the
Windows experience; an ecosystem where the standard of tooling and
presentation is otherwise very high.
People call my industry niche, but I reckon gamedev's are among (if
not) the largest remaining community of native developers who embark
on new developments frequently (ie, annually). I see it as one of D's
most promising targets, but that will depend on getting the Windows
tooling across the line. Gamedev may have a larger number of 'average'
programmers than other industries (I can't say), but whatever, that's
just how it is.

That said, I'm not working in games at the moment. But I don't see any
difference in expectation in my new company than I did in games. If
anything, it's even more windows-centric, since the cross-platform
expectation (present in games), is not really with me now.


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