Pitching D to academia

[Rikki Cattermole via Digitalmars-d]

On 07/03/16 12:26 PM, Jesse Phillips wrote:
> On Sunday, 6 March 2016 at 17:53:23 UTC, Seb wrote:
>> On Sunday, 6 March 2016 at 07:38:01 UTC, Ali Çehreli wrote:
>>> Motivated by Dmitry's "Pitching D to a gang of Gophers" thread, how
>>> about pitching it to a gang of professors and graduate students?
>>>
>>
>> If you want D to flourish, you should _really_ focus on this.
>> Many CS students usually learn only one or two language at university.
>
> I think this can be one of the selling points. In general, languages
> aren't the teaching goal of a university.
>
> Python/Java - These get chosen for early courses. Python likely because
> of its strict formatting (get people used to formatting code), the
> language is high level and has rich collection of libraries. Both of the
> languages prevent worrying about a lot of other details (memory,
> procedural is easy to explain)
>
> C/C++ - These come into later classes, I'd guess because they are used
> in industry and have unique usage requirements (null pointers, double free)
>
> Otherwise courses seem to expect you know one language (java/python) and
> try to teach you concepts within that language, and sometimes allow you
> to do the homework in any language.
>
> I think D is the right choice because it can demonstrate concepts while
> provide the advantages of why other languages are chosen. And it has a
> very nice set of toys that many students will enjoy playing with and
> using in their homework. It makes a good learning language because it
> makes a good using language.

This is actually the primary argument I made for my tertiary institute 
in making D the first language. It ended up with pretty much every tutor 
and even head of department (who was a programmer) agreeing with me.
Of course that's a big change and industry doesn't reflect it. So don't 
expect it to happen.