Fantastic exchange from DConf

[Nick Sabalausky (Abscissa) via Digitalmars-d]

On 05/11/2017 11:53 AM, Jonathan M Davis via Digitalmars-d wrote:
>
> In a way, it's amazing how successful folks can be with software that's
> quite buggy. A _lot_ of software works just "well enough" that it gets the
> job done but is actually pretty terrible. And I've had coworkers argue to me
> before that writing correct software really doesn't matter - it just has to
> work well enough to get the job done. And sadly, to a great extent, that's
> true.
>
> However, writing software that's works just "well enough" does come at a
> cost, and if security is a real concern (as it increasingly is), then that
> sort of attitude is not going to cut it. But since the cost often comes
> later, I don't think that it's at all clear that we're going to really see a
> shift towards languages that prevent such bugs. Up front costs tend to have
> a powerful impact on decision making - especially when the cost that could
> come later is theoretical rather than guaranteed.
>
> Now, given that D is also a very _productive_ language to write in, it
> stands to reduce up front costs as well, and that combined with its ability
> to reduce the theoretical security costs, we could have a real win, but with
> how entrenched C and C++ are and how much many companies are geared towards
> not caring about security or software quality so long as the software seems
> to get the job done, I think that it's going to be a _major_ uphill battle
> for a language like D to really gain mainstream use on anywhere near the
> level that languages like C and C++ have. But for those who are willing to
> use a language that makes it harder to write code with memory safety issues,
> there's a competitive advantage to be gained.
>

All very, unfortunately, true. It's like I say, the tech industry isn't 
engineering, it's fashion. There is no meritocracy here, not by a long 
shot. In tech: What's popular is right and what's right is popular, period.