Thoughts on replacement languages (Reddit + D)

[ponce via Digitalmars-d]

On Sunday, 11 January 2015 at 13:37:33 UTC, Ola Fosheim Grøstad 
wrote:
> On Sunday, 11 January 2015 at 12:57:17 UTC, MattCoder wrote:
>> Since I'm relative new here, I want know from you agree with 
>> this statement:
>>
>> "
>> [–]clay_davis_sheeit 4 points 17 hours ago*
>>
>> get real. D is more dead now than it was a year ago. if you 
>> won't accept repo counts, look at how many people attended D 
>> con vs Gophercon
>> "
>
> "more dead" is a very subjective term.
>
> It is "more dead" in the sense that you got @nogc and there was 
> a sense of movement towards getting to a workable memory model, 
> but since then nothing has happend. One step forward, then 
> stagnation.
>
> The Rust team have announced that they are moving towards a 
> non-breaking stability situation within 6 weeks. And they have 
> a working memory model.
>
> Andrei and Walter need to stop focusing on details for a moment 
> and focus more on presenting "a great plan" within 2 months. 
> Meaning stating goals and plans which gives D a direction that 
> developers want and can believe in.
>
> If no clear statements on where D is heading appears in the 
> near future... Well, then I am pretty sure that many of those 
> who prefer D will give Rust a spin when Rust hits 1.0, out of 
> boredom.
>
> Rust is not complete feature wise, but a working memory model 
> and stability is more important than having single inheritance 
> and other convenience features...
>
> So D is not dead, but is currently in a position where it can 
> be hit by both Go and Rust. The space between Rust (system 
> programming) and Go (server programming) is very tiny.

The problem with Rust and Go is that they only deliver in theory, 
while D kicks some asses in practice. How?

Eg: at this very moment, D is more stable than Rust, ground truth.

D has backends for GCC/LLVM/custom, Go has backends for GCC / 
Plan9, Rust only for LLVM. None of Rust+Go can link with binaries 
produced by eg. the Microsoft compiler. None of them has Visual 
Studio integration with debugging support and that is pretty 
important for native and enterprise programmers.

Go is actively behind the times by preventing shared libraries 
and discouraging exceptions, let alone generics. None of the C++ 
programmers I know give Go any credit, cause it would make their 
work more difficult, and it's already pretty difficult.

Despite efforts, Rust don't get syntax right. They will enjoy 
huge amount of complaining as soon as people actually use the 
language, only to discover it is not fun enough and fun is more 
important than "memory safety without GC". Looks like it 
inherited its boringness from Ocaml.

I don't buy in the Rust team stability guarantees, you can't go 
from pondering about removing "box" this very week (the syntax is 
from this year) then promising stability forever starting next 
month. But for some reason everything they say has a ring of 
truth, because it's Mozilla they only do Good Things right?

They will come to the same model as D, minimizing code breakage 
but do it anyway, because it's way more practical. And as soon as 
Servo is interrupted because of internal politics at Mozilla or 
rebudgeting (ie. very high probability), Rust will be halted in a 
heartbeat since loosing its purpose. Ever noticed the Rust 
original designer jumped off ship long ago?

That won't happen with D, whatever the ratio of github projects 
in the fashion industry.