Fantastic exchange from DConf

[Ola Fosheim Grøstad via Digitalmars-d]

On Friday, 12 May 2017 at 04:08:52 UTC, Laeeth Isharc wrote:
> build tool.  We have extern(C++) which is great, and no other 
> language has it.

Objective-C++/Swift.

> Maybe it's wrong to think about there being one true inheritor 
> of the mantle of C and C++.  Maybe no new language will gain 
> the market share that C has, and if so that's probably a good 
> thing.  Mozilla probably never had any moments when they woke 
> up and thought hmm maybe we should have used Go instead, and I 
> doubt people writing network services think maybe Rust would 
> have been better.

Yes, I think this is right, although C++ is taking over more and 
more of C's space. But there are still niches where C++ have a 
hard time going and C still dominates.

The problem is of course, that less and less software projects 
benefit from what C offers...

> But if you're a principal - ie in some way an owner of a 
> business - you haven't got the luxury of fooling yourself, not 
> if you want to survive and flourish.  The buck stops here, so 
> it's a risk to use D, but it's also a risk not to use D - you 
> can't pretend the conventional wisdom is without risk when it 
> may not suit the problem that's before you. And it's your 
> problem today and it's still your problem tomorrow, and that 
> leads to a different orientation towards the future than being 
> a cog in a vast machine where the top guy is measured by 
> whether he beats earnings next quarter.

I don't really think all that many principals make such decisions 
without pressure from the engineers in the organization, unless 
it is for going with some big league name...

In general many leaders have been burned by using tooling from 
companies that has folded or not being able to fix issues. Which 
is a very good reason for going with the safe and well known. 
Most projects have enough uncertainty factors already so adding 
an extra uncertainty factor in the tooling is usually not the 
right choice.


> The web guys do have a lot of engineers but they have an 
> inordinate influence on the culture.  Lots more code gets

Right, the web guys adopt bleeding edge tech like crazy, because 
the risk is low. The projects are small and they can start over 
with a new tech on the next project in a few months. They don't 
have to plan for sticking with the same tooling for years and 
years.


> And I am sure Walter is right about the importance of memory 
> safety.  But outside of certain areas D isn't in a battle with 
> Rust; memory safety is one more appealing modern feature of D.  
> To say it's important to get it right isn't to say it has to 
> defeat Rust. Not that you implied this, but some people at 
> dconf seemed to implicitly think that way.

Well, memory safety isn't a modern feature at all actually. Most 
languages provide it, C is a notable exception...