TIOBE December 2015 - D rose 5 positions

[Ola Fosheim Grøstad via Digitalmars-d]

On Wednesday, 6 January 2016 at 16:52:34 UTC, Joakim wrote:
> Swift is dumbed down?

Yes, they are streamlining for apps.  It is ARC through and 
through. They are removing things like "++", currying and C-style 
for-loops; in order to make the language simpler for programmers. 
Cutting complexity where it isn't really adding much to the 
language in _typical_ scenarios.

>  I'm surprised you started off by saying that 80%/GC is the big 
> market, but now believe D should be "advanced."

It is the bigger crowded tooling-demanding market where you have 
Java, C#, Go, Swift and a slew of others. Without tooling you 
don't stand a chance in that market.

And really, if you want to compete with C, you can't really be in 
that market. Do it well, or not at all.

>> Swift3 probably will try to get closer to C though. Apple 
>> seems to be focused on making C less frequently needed.
>
> So they too will try to straddle both horses!

No, they aim for ABI stability and portability. No concurrency 
features.

https://github.com/apple/swift-evolution

> Traditionally, it's been C and C++.  I could see D providing a 
> lighter version that went after C, especially in embedded, 
> while the current version competes with C++.

With at different team?

> We're talking cross-platform here, Swift isn't even in the game 
> till they get on other platforms than OSX/iOS.

But who are using D for cross platform development today? Isn't 
Linux the primary platform in real world use (i.e. deployment)?

> more every year.  Apple does it by continually staying at the 
> top of the performance heap, with their in-house designed 
> custom ARM cores blowing away the benchmarks year after year

I don't really think consumers know what they buy, but people 
tend to want the same UI experience... so switching over takes 
time.

> Maybe, but I don't see them willingly choosing javascript. :)

They'll be forced to. Managers will choose whatever readymades 
carry name recognition... ;^) Java, .NET, node.js, Angular...

> I think most users are used to the web being different or don't 
> care about the "look and feel."

Most users probably don't care, but people who spec mobile apps 
put it into the requirements.

> So "dominant" that Facebook ditched their HTML5 mobile app for 
> native and Snapchat doesn't even have a webapp!  HTML5 may now 
> be fairly ubiquitously _implemented_ in current browsers, but 
> you greatly overestimate how many devs are using it or want to.

Not sure what you mean, Facebook invest a lot of money into web 
tech like React. If anything Facebook is heavily pushing WebApps 
by funding the frameworks that enables it.

> I don't get it: you have access to a debugger _in the 
> customer's browser_ with ES7?

All browsers have debuggers built in...

> Every time this happens over the previous decades, something 
> simpler comes along and 80/20s the past bloated tech.  The web 
> is _long_ overdue for this.  They're finally trying to clean it 
> up a bit, with the recent HTTP/2 and WebAsm moves, but it isn't 
> enough.

I don't see HTTP/2 and WebAsm as  a big thing. It is just another 
step to make web a more solid cross platform deployment platform.

I don't spend much time on compatibility tweaks anymore. I don't 
mind spending 1% on cross platform. That's actually pretty 
impressive. Try to get there with native apps on 5 platforms: 
Linux, OS-X, Windows, Android, iOS... Impossible.