D for project in computational chemistry

[bachmeier via Digitalmars-d]

On Wednesday, 5 August 2015 at 17:47:49 UTC, Yura wrote:

> The dominant languages in science now for production codes are 
> Fortran or C/C++, may be D could become another option?
>
> With kind regards,
> Yury

Yes. The question is whether we can put together a group of 
developers to build the infrastructure, which is a lot more than 
just code. That means, in particular, good documentation and 
using it for our own projects.

Everyone these days talks about how Python is a powerhouse 
scientific programming language. A decade ago it was crap. I 
know, because I watched it for years wishing I could use it. 
There were some poorly documented, domain-specific, 
hacked-together libraries, but Python was not for the most part a 
suitable choice.

There is no reason we can't do the same for D. The main question 
is whether we are sufficiently committed to that goal. Others may 
consider Python, Julia, and Matlab to be good enough alternatives 
(I don't, but not everyone necessarily agrees with me).