Moving back to .NET

[Ola Fosheim Grøstad via Digitalmars-d]

On Tuesday, 29 September 2015 at 15:31:30 UTC, Laeeth Isharc 
wrote:
> On Sunday, 27 September 2015 at 09:51:42 UTC, Ola Fosheim 
> Grøstad wrote:
>> But even after years of polish Go is still perceived as risky:
>
> Of course it's risky.  Yet why do people who are sensible 
> commercial people who aren't in the business of gambling use 
> it?  Because it's a very good tool for certain kinds of job, 
> and the benefits outweight the costs, risks being one of those 
> costs.

Yet people are looking at creating a derivative language of Go 
for operating system development:

https://groups.google.com/d/topic/golang-nuts/6dI4vIxRgn8/discussion

Why did they not go with D?

> observation.  He wrote _adopting_ and rather than actually 
> address what he said, you strawmanned it and said _playing 
> with_.
>  I hardly need to point out the difference.

Playing with is the starting point for adoption. That is how 
programming languages gain traction. You start playing with it, 
then make some small things with it, if it does not disappoint it 
moves up the chain. C++ didn't start out big, neither did Python 
or most other languages. This is also how tools are adopted in 
larger projects. You make small projects (or pilots) first. But 
if you want to use tools in big projects you actually require 
external support for it from multiple parties to avoid lock-in 
and many other factors.

> But you certainly have made many blanket statements about how 
> others behave and should behave and it's my belief that you 
> don't have a proper basis for doing so.

I am describing how best practices affects decision making 
priorities. This is not "prescriptive", it is "descriptive". It 
does not relate to any particular party, but I certainly defend 
the viewpoint that long running projects in general better off 
picking a base that is supported and where the solutions to 
problems are known in advance.

> We know that you think D is a toy language, although you also 
> say that you aren't calling it a toy language.

That's a rather manipulative assertion.

> Empirically speaking, some very smart people have built their 
> business around D.

And so they have around Visual Basic, Php, Javascript and just 
about any language imaginable.

> When you tell people like that that in effect they are idiots, 
> you ought to have some basis if you wish to be taken seriously.

Another manipulative assertion. I've never said anything about 
people who adopt D. They have their reasons, and their strategy. 
I have no interest in forming an opinion about what they do.

What I have said is that if you adopt D for a large project you 
have to be prepare to take custody of the compiler and runtime. 
You need several employees that are capable of that or an actual 
support contract with a solid organization.

The ecosystem around the D compilers is very vulnerable.

> And for the language foundation people, they'll do best by 
> listening to those who do use D successfully to solve their own 
> problems, and there are plenty of those, and most of these have 
> better things to do than post on the forum.

I have no opinions on a future D foundation.

Bute generally, pure development organizations are more likely to 
provide support for open source projects than non-development 
organizations.

> How often do you see emsi, sociomantic, weka, or the other 
> well-known D users post here about this kind of question?

I have no opionions on those organizations. But if they are the 
ones that actually drive the development of D then maybe it would 
be possible to formulate a strategic target for D that can give 
the project more direction.

> You imply that this is a pattern, when I am not aware of such, 
> and indeed, as Walter pointed out, a significant shift a few 
> years back was from people saying "I'm a Java guy at work, but 
> I use D for side projects" to "Here is how I use D at work".

Walter has in the past been excruciatingly clear on D being a 
system level programming language and that competing with C# and 
other similar application level languages would be futile and not 
within the goals for him.

If that has changed, I'd like to see him spell it out.

I hope not. D has some potential as a system level language, much 
less potential as an application level language.

> avoid speaking about the ecosystem.  If Go didn't have nice 
> networking libraries, its adoption would have been rather 
> different.  These things are a package deal.

Go is not a system level language as per today.

> It's a big world, and even Andrei and Walter should not pretend 
> that they understand all the possible ways in which people 
> might use D and what might be important to them.  (And they 
> don't).

Actually, they should try to understand this for a defined target 
group. If not they will not be able to build a solid language 
that is competitive.