My first experience as a D Newbie

[Ecstatic Coder]

On Monday, 16 October 2017 at 08:56:21 UTC, Rion wrote:
> On Sunday, 15 October 2017 at 20:27:35 UTC, Laeeth Isharc wrote:
>> D is much less gratifying than other languages for most people.
>>  Just like Windows was more gratifying than Linux for most 
>> people in 2000.  And I suppose that's likely to change slowly, 
>> but continue to be the case for a while so long as people 
>> working on Windows don't notice when something isn't working 
>> and fix things at root cause.  It's usually not that much more 
>> difficult to do so than work around it, and it usually pays 
>> off even considered selfishly.
>>
>> I can appreciate your frustration, but considering how many 
>> years knowing a programming language can pay off for, a few 
>> hundred hours spent to learn something new isn't that much.  
>> That's like a couple of months full-time and if it works out 
>> the payback period should easily be a year.  Viewed 
>> rationally, that's a pretty good return on investment compared 
>> to most other opportunities available.
>>
>> In a world where there are lots of smart people and knowledge 
>> is widely available, the barriers to opportunity (there must 
>> be barriers, otherwise the opportunity would be competed away) 
>> are often emotional ones.  So I like things where the 
>> difficulty is front-loaded, because they tend to be neglected 
>> by modern people who are used to quick gratification.  And 
>> whilst it surely can be frustrating, the situation is already 
>> better both on Windows and as regards documentation and 
>> tooling than it was in 2014.  It's not difficult to make 
>> little changes towards what one would like to see oneself.
>
> When you invest this time into a language, you have 
> expectations. A person expects for a language this old, that 
> every puzzle fits together without issue.
>
> Call me spoiled if you want but quick gratification it is not. 
> The time wasted on dealing with issue on D, is time you can 
> have spend in a different language actually writing 
> code/testing. Its a barrier to the language its own success 
> when its not as user friendly as the other languages.
>
> If a person needs to do a action in Windows and it takes him 5 
> mouse clicks. But hey, under Linux you can do it with one 
> command line arg, ... the Linux approach sound more easy right? 
> Until you add the time needed to learn the command and assuming 
> there are no issues. What is more rewarding or punishing? There 
> is a reason that Windows is still so popular. Windows does not 
> get in the way. It just keep working. Can it be improved, yes! 
> MS puts a massive amount of time and money in there testing. 
> And it shows in there platform.
>
> Its the same reason why Linux as a desktop OS will never work 
> out. Too much puzzle pieces that do not fit, too much assumed 
> that people need ( and have the time ) to learn the complicated 
> way. A lack of inter-testing beyond just the basic compile 
> tests ( i mean really usage ).
>
> Its easy to see the same attitude in D as a community project. 
> There are GREAT pieces being written but everybody is working 
> more as a solo developer, with no clear guideline. That is the 
> big difference between a language like D and corporate backed 
> languages.
>
> I can easily think of a dozen extensions to D, that need to be 
> part of the standard library or extended library of D, like 
> DCompute, mir-algorithm, ...
>
> Why? Because its again lose projects that you as a end consumer 
> need to discover. Most of the time written and maintained by 
> one person. Too much here is so single person focused, that its 
> hard to see people continue the work if that person has no more 
> time.
>
> Too much here is single issue focused and it shows in the 
> developers there background, what results in the testing of 
> platforms, the interaction etc.
>
> Maybe i explain this badly, but D seems has a lot of issues 
> that people here are not aware off because they are already in 
> the D mindset. And its those issues that show up the most, when 
> one first tries this language.

Once again what you say confirm what I'm repeating all the time : 
D hasn't enough the "plug-n-play" mindset.

The current view is elitist : "D needs some investment blablabla".

The sad result is that NONE of my friend have liked their first 
experience with D.

Really. NONE of them.

Despite they said initially that it "looks interesting".

The website should be more clear and make a choice "by default".

1/ install DMD (or ...)
2/ install CoEdit (or ...)

You should say to the beginners how to install what will work 
most of the time, and bring the less annoyance. While giving them 
other options too, but the simplest main path to success should 
be obvious.

CoEdit, along with DMD, gets the job done.

Maybe it's not the sexiest IDE, but it works very well for 
"beginners" scripts.

You create an empty file, you type your code, you ask to run it.

If there are errors, it's ergonomic too.

And for "power users", indeed, there are PLENTY of opportunities, 
in PLENTY of environments.

But D NEEDS a DEFAULT IDE, something that should even be 
pre-installed by the DMD compiler installer, if the user doesn't 
"uncheck" the installation option.

Again, marketing errors.

Make D MORE EASY for BEGINNERS.

And by beginners, as you know me, I mean scripters, who come from 
JavaScript, Python, Ruby.

I know that at the moment they may not be much, considering the 
website which obviously targets C++/Rust-like developers.

But I still think it's an error.

Put D on the "easy to pick up" road. It's where it should be. 
Because D IS EASY to learn. And it's also EASY to use.

But make the installation and learning curve as smooth as 
possible for less-skilled developers, by allowing them to 
download an all-in-one bundled installer 
(compiler+ide+tutorials+examples), and they will be much more to 
join the D community !

They have their place here too, so be more welcoming with them.

Because you may think it's already the case, but you should trust 
Rion and the others when they say it's not really the case, 
especially on windows.