One more question - an untapped audience.

[Joakim]

On Tuesday, 11 February 2014 at 17:37:17 UTC, Steve Teale wrote:
> You hijacked my topic and converted it into the usual arguments 
> about lack of infrastructure for D.
>
> I'm talking about guys and girls who don't have a computer, let 
> alone C#. They just have a cheap smart phone that maybe they 
> succeeded in getting rooted. So is your answer that they should 
> just use Java?
>
> And yes, the C# library is excellent, but D is a better 
> language, and is easy to use. Get out of the wood and see the 
> trees!
>
> I'm at the other end of my life, with a long view of history. 
> We should do our bit to help to bring civilization and reason 
> (back) to the world, not just tell people 'use C#'.
>
> A more relevant criticism would be that people who only know 
> say Swahili won't be able to find out about and use D anyway - 
> Java either. Sadly my Swahili is not up to it.
Well, that's the problem, it was kind of a silly question to 
begin with.  How many Swahili people even have a smartphone, as 
opposed to a feature phone?  What percentage of them would be 
able to grasp the concept of rooting, let alone execute it?

I suppose if we were to humor the question, as it's always 
possible that the next John Carmack is out there somewhere, 
here's what I'd suggest.  You can get an Android smartphone for 
as cheap as $50-100 these days.  I'd pick one up that worked with 
a bluetooth keyboard, as programming on the touch keyboard on 
your small phone screen is paramount to torture. ;) Then, you 
have two options:

1) Download an ssh client app and buy access to a FreeBSD or 
linux VPS, which you can get for as cheap as $5/month.  This 
might require a credit card or paypal account, not sure how tough 
those are to get in the developing world.  You can then ssh into 
the VPS, download dmd or any other compiler, and code to your 
heart's content, albeit with some annoying lag from developing 
over the network.

2) Root your smartphone and install all the necessary development 
software, which I'm not sure even exists, as most devs 
cross-compile to Android.

Both seem kind of far-fetched.  You need a certain basic level of 
knowledge, wealth, and leisure time to get into programming, 
which many in the developing world don't have.  But if they 
really went after it, the VPS option is probably the best bet, at 
a cost of about $100 up front plus $5/month for hosting.