Moving back to .NET

[Ola Fosheim Grøstad via Digitalmars-d]

On Monday, 5 October 2015 at 15:46:35 UTC, Jeremy wrote:
> Respectfully, I think helping new users get a jump start on 
> their application produces an initial jolt of productivity 
> which in turn helps keep someone motivated.

Jump-starting does not keep them motivated. It makes them invest 
initially, but at this point retention of a specific type of 
developers (compiler/runtime capable developers) is more 
important than recruitment of all kinds of developers.

Rust is taking a lot of that market. Understanding why and doing 
something about it, is important.

> I prefer Andrei's mantra of "...being good at everything C and 
> C++ are good at, and also by being good at many tasks that C 
> and C++ are not good at..."

That's just a mantra, C++ and D are pretty close as far as 
library authoring goes, but currently D represents lock-in 
compared to C/C++, provides much fewer options than C++14 
compilers/extensions/tooling, also semantically. That is unlikely 
to change without a focused direction that also takes C++17/20 
and Rust into account.

D isn't competing with C++14 / Rust 1.0, it is competing with 
C++17/20 and Rust 1.X, due to the time it takes to polish. But it 
is impossible to do anything focused without defining what the 
target is. And that lack of a focused strategy that is currently 
a main issue with D's future, because the rest of the programming 
world _is_ moving.

Here's an entertaining video about the actor model, that 
represent one established programming model that C++ is not so 
good at currently (but may become better at):

https://channel9.msdn.com/Shows/Going+Deep/Hewitt-Meijer-and-Szyperski-The-Actor-Model-everything-you-wanted-to-know-but-were-afraid-to-ask