A few notes on choosing between Go and D for a quick project

[Andrei Alexandrescu via Digitalmars-d]

On 3/13/15 6:18 AM, Dicebot wrote:
> On Friday, 13 March 2015 at 00:20:40 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
>> A friend of mine needed to complete a small project and thought of
>> using a language he didn't know for it. He already knew I work on D so
>> he considered it alongside Go. He ended up choosing the latter, and
>> documented his decision making process in a few notes that he
>> subsequently shared with me. I'll paste below a sort of transcript of
>> his handwritten notes.
>
> In my opinion it is better to focus on tempting users with D strong bits
> than oversell it by trying it compete in topics it has inherent
> disadvantage. There is not point in try to compete with Go on topic of
> simplicity - they have crippled the language tremendeously to get that
> simplicity. Simple D has no value - I would simply prefer Go instead of
> it as it has head start advantage in toolchain.

Yah, simplicity is hard to add later :o).

> Instead it is better to focus on explaining users that they don't want
> what they think they want, akin to that Bjarne quote. And don't be
> afraid to admit to certain users that D is not a best choice for them.
> It doesn't mean that such valuable feedback should be ignore - there is
> indeed a lot that can be improved in the learning curve. But trying to
> fight for user who makes choice with "trendy" and "simplicity" in mind
> is a battle lost from the very beginning.

Simplicity yes, but trends do change.


Andrei