[OT] Re: Why don't you advertise more your language on Quora etc ?

[Laeeth Isharc via Digitalmars-d]

On Tuesday, 7 March 2017 at 16:26:20 UTC, Russel Winder wrote:
>
> Learn the lesson from Java. It started with a truly crap GC and 
> everyone said Java is crap because the GC is garbage. D has 
> seemingly actually progressed beyond this stage technically but 
> not marketing wise. The Java folk worked on the GC and kept 
> replacing it over and over again. The GC got better and better. 
> Now with the G1 GC almost all the problem have gone away – as 
> has most of the moaning about Java having a crap GC. Most 
> people never notice the GC and those that do, engineer it 
> rather than moaning. The Java GC situation is now a 
> sophisticated one where those who don't really care do not have 
> a problem and those that do care have the tools to deal with it.
>
> D seems to be in a situation where those who don't care have a 
> crap GC which needs to be improved and those who do care have 
> the tools to deal with it.

> So there needs to be ongoing replacement of the D GC until 
> there is something good, this is a technical problem.

Obviously D generates less garbage...

It's really a problem of social organisation as well - as you say 
in the rest of your post.  For example Sociomantic released their 
parallel GC, but it's only a solution for linux and not Windows 
because no fork on Windows.  Why isn't it available in a form 
that will work with latest dmd master?  Because we haven't 
collectively been able to organise someone to do the work, and 
nobody has stepped up to do it voluntarily.  (And similarly with 
other GC alternatives - I know that memory barriers have problems 
too).

But it's probably a matter of time only, because resources are 
beginning to flow into supporting the language.  The D Foundation 
didn't exist a couple of years ago - and things didn't magically 
change once it came into existence.  It takes time and the 
repeated application of effort, but over time it's likely to bear 
fruit in different ways.

Things develop at their own pace, and more complex things develop 
more slowly.


> That people who care about the effect of GC still think D is a 
> crap GC-based language implies there is a marketing problem, 
> not a technical one.

Yes, but that's okay too.  Maybe it's a pity if you would like to 
work in D, and the smaller size of community means more limited 
opportunities.  But there are jobs in D, and they are growing.  
In the meantime, for those who are able to judge things by how 
they are and not depend on social proof, it might be a source of 
strategic advantage to adopt the language earlier - and pay the 
inevitable toll for that, because it is true that the tooling 
isn't yet completely mature.  Eg some things we worked on:
https://github.com/dlang/dub/pulls/John-Colvin

> We all know that many, many people see the word garbage 
> collector and run a mile in an uneducated prejudiced way. Who 
> cares about them. We care about the people who are willing to 
> try stuff out and have a problem.

Yes - exactly.  Though we can't wave a wand and make problems 
disappear unless someone is willing to work on them or sponsor 
development.

One thing that's lacking is a central list of projects that would 
benefit the language and community that enterprise users might 
sponsor.  There's the bug bounty program, but that's something a 
bit different.



Laeeth.