dlang website design

cym13 via Digitalmars-d digitalmars-d at puremagic.com
Fri Jun 23 01:29:33 PDT 2017


On Friday, 23 June 2017 at 07:44:36 UTC, Ecstatic Coder wrote:
>> Huh? You were asked about concrete action points that in your 
>> PoV would improve dlang.org. You can't just say "make it 
>> (like) python.org" ;-)
>> Could you maybe try to be a bit preciser and create a more 
>> detailed lists of points on how you would improve dlang.org?
>
> Sorry I can't.
>
> Make it look more like "python.org" is just and exactly what I 
> mean.
>
> For instance, D is the only scripting language I would use 
> nowadays.
>
> BUT I would not take the risk to use D instead of C++ to 
> develop games for instance.
>
> D is actually quite easy to sell a scripting language.
>
> Convincing people to use D instead of C, C++, Java or C# is 
> another thing.
>
> In my personal case, selling D as a better alternative to 
> Python, JavaScript or Ruby would have just needed a well chosen 
> snippet of simple code, which shows me that indeed D is some 
> kind of strongly-typed JavaScript, à la TypeScript, which is 
> both easy to learn and use.
>
> And I believe that "python.org" is currently more convincing 
> for "low-profile" programmers/scripters than "dlang.org".
>
> Just look at the code snippets...

Problem is, low profile programmers aren't the most interesting 
target for D right now. You have to choose your battles and I 
believe that isn't done enough in D marketing. For example we 
have lots of issues promoting the GC because we want to attract 
people that like that kind of memory management and at the same 
time people that don't. So we end up saying "yeah, we have a GC, 
but you can do things without it" and the same question comes 
over and over again "make up your mind, is it possible or not to 
code in D without GC?".

Right now the marketing targets companies and C++ programmers. 
Maybe that's not the way to go but it's the path that was choosen 
until now. To those programmers the message our marketing tries 
to send is "D is a serious, solid language that gives you the 
power to build industry software". It's all about being a rock: 
solid, sturdy, there to stay for years to come. Of course on side 
channels we talk about it being also a good scripting language 
etc, but that's not the main image. An image of scripting 
language is likely to make D loose most of its credibility 
amongst C++ groups (I may be wrong about it but it's the 
impression I get).

What you're proposing is way more than a website modification, 
it's a profound marketting change. Maybe it's the right way to 
go, but if that's what you want you may want to rethink your 
whole approach with the fact that it's not about dlang.org's 
cosmetic anymore.


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