Some questions on latest work

[Andrei Alexandrescu via Digitalmars-d]

On 04/25/2016 09:04 PM, Bill Hicks wrote:
> On Monday, 25 April 2016 at 21:20:04 UTC, Bienlein wrote:
>> Hello,
>>
>> I've been busy with other things for about a year and would like to
>> ask some questions to catch up with latest language/library additions
>> in D. Looking through the change logs simply appeared to be a bit
>> tedious. My questions might look a bit like asking pain point
>> questions on purpose, but it's really only about catching up with the
>> status on some issues:
>>
>> Thanks for any answers.
>> Regards, Bienlein
>
> To be frank, if you are using D for anything more than a throwaway hobby
> project, I have to tell you, D is a failed language, so stop wasting
> your time.  The people who think that one day D is going to replace or
> threaten C++, or for that matter any other programming language, are
> delusional.  No offense to all those who have spent great amount of time
> contributing to D, but people need to accept reality.
>
> Five years ago Rust was not even a blip on the radar; however, over the
> years it has gained steady momentum.  It has a larger and ever-growing
> users and contributors, as well as many PL researchers that will ensure
> the language is future-proof for the next 10-20 years and beyond.  If
> you are running away from C++, Rust should be your first choice as a
> systems programming language.  And with all the 'improvements' that C++
> has received, and will receive, there is really not much room left for D.
>
> D also has many flaws, and they don't know how to fix them or won't,
> specially not without breaking backward compatibility.  If you have a GC
> that is not optional, then you don't have a systems programming
> language.  They finally recognized that, and decided to remove all GC
> from Phobos so that they case say "see, no GC." Even the basic
> containers that are available in C++ are missing in Phobos.  Why?
> Because of allocators, which are in experimental stage.  How many years
> did that take?  Over five years.  Good luck implementing some fancy
> container and hope you won't have to rewrite it again in the future.
> Nowadays they're spending time implementing stupid features that nobody
> cares about or needs. And why DMD still uses its own back-end and not
> GCC or LLVM is beyond me.  I guess you look really good on your resume
> for reinventing such a big wheel, but it's a foolish and arrogant
> mistake that has not benefited D.  And the idea of a foundation was
> proposed many years ago, but I suppose back then people were fantasizing
> about the day that Facebook would poor millions of dollars into D, but
> that never happened.  And Facebook's decision to no longer host DConf
> was a heavy blow.  The list goes on and on and one...

That's a pretty awesome rant! Bill, could you please email me your 
mailing address? I'd be glad to send you a DConf T-shirt. Thanks! -- Andrei