Pitching an investment bank on using D for their bond analytics

[John Colvin via Digitalmars-d]

On Tuesday, 14 April 2015 at 12:08:54 UTC, D Denizen since a year 
wrote:
> Hi.
>
> I have been here a year or so, and trust you will forgive my 
> posting pseudonymously on this occasion.  If you guess who it 
> is, please be kind enough not to say for now.
>
> A friend has been invited to be a consultant for an investment 
> bank that would like to build a set of analytics for fixed 
> income products.  The team is currently quite small - about 5 
> C++ developers - and the idea is to start with a proof of 
> concept and then build on it as there is further buy-in from 
> the business.
>
> Having been using D for a year or so, I am pretty comfortable 
> that it can do the job, and likely much better than the C++ 
> route for all the normal reasons.  I haven't experience of 
> using D in a proper enterprise environment, but I think this 
> group might be open to trying D and that I might be at least 
> part-time involved.
>
> I also have little experience in getting across the merits of 
> this technology to people very used to C++, and so I have not 
> yet built up a standard set of answers to the normal objections 
> to 'buying' that will crop up in any situation of this sort.
>
> So I am interested in:
>
> - what are the things to emphasize in building the case for 
> trying D?  the most effective factors that persuade people are 
> not identical with the technically strongest reasons, because 
> often one needs to see it before one gets it.
>
> - what are the likely pitfalls in the early days?
>
> - what are potential factors that might make D a bad choice in 
> this scenario?  I would like to use D certainly - but it is of 
> course much more important that the client gets the best 
> result, however it is done.
>
> - am I right in thinking C++ integration more or less works, 
> except instantiating C++ templates from D?  what are the 
> gotchas?
>
> (I appreciate there is not so much to go on, and much depends 
> on specific factors).  But any quick thoughts and experiences 
> would be very welcome.

A couple of big pluses:

1) Ease of changing code. D codebases tend to feel more flexible 
than C++

2) Easy to transparently make use of highly optimised low-level 
code in high level constructs, whether that means carefully 
written D, inline asm or calling out to established C(++) 
libraries.

Possible pitfalls:

1) What systems are being targeted? D on obscure big-iron is a 
very different prospect to D on a bunch of x86 linux servers.

2) Added maintenance due to language/library changes, however 
minor. Not a particularly big deal IMO, particularly when your 
writing a piece of software for in-house usage.

3) Limited support options. There aren't swathes of consultants 
available at any time to fix your urgent problems.