D on quora ...

[Jonathan M Davis]

On Friday, October 06, 2017 23:19:01 Brad Roberts via Digitalmars-d wrote:
> On 10/6/2017 10:19 PM, Adam Wilson via Digitalmars-d wrote:
> > What if we stop focusing on the C/C++ people so much? The like their
> > tools and have no perceivable interest in moving away from them
> > (Stockholm Syndrome much?). The arguments the use are primarily meant
> > as defensive ploys, because they compare everything to C/C++ and when
> > it doesn't match in some way or another the other language must be
> > deficient. They've already decided that C/C++ is the meter stick
> > against which all other languages are to be judged. Unsurprisingly,
> > nothing that is NOT C/C++ meets their exacting demands.
> >
> > I saw we ditch the lot and focus on the large languages where D can
> > get some traction (C#/Java).
>
> Or recognize that painting huge diverse groups as if there's a single
> brush with which to do so is a huge fallacy.  Consider that the two
> leaders, as well as a large number of the contributing developers, come
> from the c++ community and that's not a bad thing, but rather a big part
> of _why_ they came to D.
>
> As always, focusing on the users of the language tends to pay a lot more
> dividends than focusing on nay sayers.  Luckily, that's how things tend
> to proceed here, so yay for that.

+1

Yeah, overall, most of the major contributors seem to have come from a C++
background, and a lot of the folks who actively comment do as well. We
really don't seem to have any problem attracting folks from the C++
community. It's just that there are plenty of folks who would prefer to
continue to use C++ or end up gravitating to a language that isn't C++ or D.
But we still have plenty of C++ folks among those who decide to use D.

Honestly, I've gotten to the point that I don't care much about trying to
appeal to folks who complain about D. If we just make the language the best
that we can, that will attract folks - that's largely what's attracted them
in the past. Sure, we could and probably should do better with marketing D,
and some of the complaints that get leveled at the language are valid and
should be addressed, but trying to convince folks who are already convinced
that they don't like D just doesn't seem like a good way to spend our time
and energy.

Complaints from folks not using D _can_ help shows us areas in which we're
deficient, but they're not necessarily right, and they're not our actual
user base.

And really, what we need is a good language with good tools that supports a
vibrant community of those who want to use it. We want that community to
grow, because it will help the language and make it easier to get jobs using
it, but it's not like we need to convince the whole world to use D - not to
mention that there are classes of folks that we don't want; their views and
goals just differ too much from ours, which is part of why having a diverse
set of languages out there can actually be valuable. Different folks prefer
different languages, and trying to get everyone to agree is never going to
work. As long as D is sucessful enough that those of us who want to use it
can use it and do what we need to get done, then that should be plenty. If
more folks decide that they like what D's offering, then great. If they
prefer C++ or C# or Rust or whatever, then they can have fun doing whatever
they need to do with those languages, and we won't have to make changes to D
just to make them happy.

- Jonathan M Davis