Random points from a D n00b CTO

[Joakim via Digitalmars-d]

On Monday, 14 July 2014 at 03:55:02 UTC, Vic wrote:
> Hi all,
> I'm a CTO at a start up and interested in porting our Java 
> project to D. Some points, I have been lurking on D for years, 
> went to my first D conf recently. Also I was one of top 20 
> people to join Java Struts, and that grew to 3million plus end 
> users so I have some 'cred'. Hope this helps:

Thanks for the feedback, hope it works out for you.

> - Confusing forum. First listed forum on 'D' is not for D 
> users, but it's called D! It is in fact for D commiters. This 
> causes frustration for both users and commiters. (yes there is 
> 'learn D' but it's 4th down. Commiters forum should be slightly 
> hidden and user questions should not be answered in commuters 
> but politely asked to post in the proper forum.).

Good point, the main forum is both for "general discussion" and 
where a lot of talk about language development takes place.  That 
list of forums should be reorganized.

> - I was *very* disappointed that using base library locks you 
> into GC vs ref. counting.
> Separate, I like how Objective C has NSObject for GC 
> purpose(I'd love a framework that is just ref counting), but 
> there should be dual libs and base should not be GC.

Coming from Java, this seems overly aggressive, not like you 
could avoid the GC in Java.

> - D is/has become complex. metaprograming, generics, macros, 
> etc. This is a culture issue, very hard to fix cultural issues 
> w/o losing most commiters. Just a fast system lang w/o headers, 
> 'boost' and such. All this other stuff can be 3rd party eco 
> system and should be pushed out from D proper into 
> implementations and add ons.

It has become much more complex since D1, no doubt, but the goals 
have evolved.

> - Dub rocks.
>
> - Very little 'user' outreach. Meetups such as 'learn D'  (set 
> up editor w/ DUB, and write some vibe.d DNS client/server in 4 
> lessons). Or how to use a c .so lib.

Yeah, D definitely needs better marketing.  One of the reasons 
rails took off a decade ago is a conference video Hansson put out 
showing how easy it was to setup and build a small webapp with 
rails (probably this one or an earlier version? 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gzj723LkRJY).  Nothing too 
technical, just showing off ease of use as a feature.  D needs 
such stuff, whether written or videos.

Take, for example, the article Walter wrote about component 
programming using UFCS, maybe the best article related to D:

http://www.drdobbs.com/architecture-and-design/component-programming-in-d/240008321

If Hansson or some other marketer were writing about the same 
topic, it'd be all whiz-bang chained one-liners with little 
technical motivation of the underlying language features.  I 
prefer what Walter wrote, but many would prefer the latter, at 
least when first hearing about D.  D needs both.

One line of thought that's been evolving for me lately is that D 
needs a blog, where we can highlight good stuff about the 
language.  Go has one:

http://blog.golang.org/

This post should go on D's:

http://forum.dlang.org/post/mailman.3738.1405098936.2907.digitalmars-d@puremagic.com

I could see H.S. Teoh writing a series of such posts, expanding 
on each of the bullet points.  Right now, he'll throw something 
off on the forum and it'll get buried by all the posts on here, 
missed by most users.  A blog is where such material could be 
highlighted.

We even have a D blog engine built on vibe.d that we could put to 
use:

https://github.com/rejectedsoftware/vibelog

I'd be happy to administer such a blog, if it's a matter of 
someone volunteering.