Pathing in the D ecosystem is generally broken (at least on windows)

[Manu via Digitalmars-d]

On 26 September 2015 at 16:35, schweik via Digitalmars-d
<digitalmars-d at puremagic.com> wrote:
> On Saturday, 26 September 2015 at 05:35:04 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:
>>
>> Polish certainly matters a lot.
>
>
> Improving quality is an exponetial problem. After a while to reach the upper
> level requires a lot of work for almost none signifiant value added.

False, the value is indeed subtle, but extremely powerful. I don't
necessarily advocate
there-were-10_000-QA-testers-banging-at-this-for-years 'perfect', but
it has to work reliably, especially the first time, and without manual
configuration.

> The whole topic is absurd. It's not a problem for someone who's really
> interested to setup a few things, including writing one entry in the PATH.
> If that's perceived as a barrier then the person has probably nothing to do
> in the field.

I don't know where you work, but I've been working for almost 2
decades with hundreds of 'professional programmers'. They're not like
OSS programmers. They don't really care about technology, they don't
study it on the side, they don't read tech blogs, they don't keep up
with the latest trends. They don't care, they just go to work from
9-5, they have a task list, and they need to strike items off that
list and *anything* that is perceived as friction is written off
almost immediately. They have firmly set habits formed over many
years, and they're not interested in changing unless they can
immediately perceive a significant benefit to their productivity.
They're also averse to risk, so balancing that sense of risk requires
a really encouraging first experience.

These are of course gross generalisations, but I feel they are
more-or-less accurate. This is how it is. At least in my neck of the
woods.

Obviously, this is way off topic and extends to far more than paths
and configuring the tool, but it's just that this path thing is
endlessly recurring, it seems like such a no brainer that this sort of
thing should never fail and I kinda lost my shit.

Your comment is based on the assumption that the user *wants* to use D
(is "really interested"), or approaches it like some tool they must
install and configure to complete their task. That's not the case. In
2015, users are almost entirely indifferent if not skeptical towards
[new language here] (in this case, D), and likely fatigued by the
background noise of shiny new technologies forced upon them, or
otherwise fighting for their attention. They're effectively humoring
me, allowing me an opportunity to prove their preconception wrong, and
it had better be the case that nothing goes wrong during these few
precarious minutes; every little thing is very damaging to
impressions. Conversely, if it all goes smoothly and looks slick, it
makes a very good impression... as if what I'm peddling might be true
;)
My comments are anecdotes. I've been witnessing the exact same
patterns, over and over and over for years. It's not that they want to
hate D, it's that D has to make a valuable impression on them very
quickly before they lose interest and get back to work.

*I JUST WANT TO USE D PROFESSIONALLY*

I don't like having my time wasted, and the amount of time that C++
wastes is... kinda painful to quantify. I want to enjoy my career, and
I don't enjoy programming C++ anymore.
At the same time, I can't seem to use D professionally for apparently
trivial, almost intangible reasons. I think most D users understand
this feeling well.

Perhaps part of the problem is that the bar presented by C++ is fairly
high? C/C++ is like, really established, and Visual Studio is pretty
good. The quality of the compiler isn't very important; MSVC is so bad
it's not funny! The most important things are that it 'just works'™
out of the box, the debugger MUST work well, F12 (go to definition)
also works well, and autocomplete works most of the time. I can say
with confidence that those things are all that my colleagues care
about. They will test those features in the first 2 minutes, and if it
doesn't work, they will stop. VisualD does pretty well, but we fail at
debugging.

I have advocated in my workplaces/community for years with varying
degrees of success, but every single workplace anecdote I have has
basically gone "colleagues heard my rants, got excited, tried it out
briefly, fell down due to [insert whatever reason foiled this
attempt]". And there is rarely a second chance.
Are we making a tool for professional programmers, or is this
community an intellectual hobby that attracts language nerds? We need
to learn how to impress well on working professionals, in the few
moments that we get to do so; typically just a couple of minutes.

I'm driving my company's tech towards a completely language agnostic
platform, where components may pick and choose between suitable
languages for specific tasks. I'll have another good go at a sell for
D at that point since it's further matured since my last attempt a
year ago. It will almost definitely be another failure because LDC
doesn't support CV8 debuginfo, or Emscripten, but I'll keep trying,
maybe get there one day... :/

</rant> ... sorry!