How do you use D?

Pjotr Prins pjotr.public12 at thebird.nl
Wed Jan 3 12:15:13 UTC 2018


On Wednesday, 3 January 2018 at 10:29:05 UTC, Ola Fosheim Grøstad 
wrote:
> On Wednesday, 3 January 2018 at 09:56:48 UTC, Pjotr Prins wrote:
>> average ones. And D must be there. Similar to the Haskell and 
>> Lisp communities we have the luxury of dealing with the best 
>> programmers out there.
>
> This attitude is toxic, and it isn't true either.

We differ in opinion here.

> Good programmers aren't stuck on any single language and will 
> pick the tool best suited for the job at hand.  Good 
> programmers are also good at picking up new languages.

Very true. Some languages are harder to learn and apply then 
others. Few C++ programmers make great Lisp or Haskell 
programmers.

> Hype leads to critical mass, which leads to higher productivity 
> because you get better tooling, better documentation (including 
> stack overflow), better libraries and better portability.

I don't disagree. I am reacting to other messages where people 
assert that we need to improve this and that for the sake of 
popularity. Maybe it is toxic not to care too much about what 
other people want/need and perhaps I am wrong. But I don't think 
D will become a hyped language, so we may as well stop wanting to 
be one. D is a language for software engineers - and they come if 
they need it. I remember a Google engineer telling me that he was 
tired of people bringing up D every time. That was 10 years ago. 
D has had every chance to become a hype ;)

Erlang has been a non-hype language for a long time. Now the 
success of whatsapp made it a lot more interesting to startups 
and therefore it is growing. Even so, I don't think it will ever 
become a hype. If you program in Erlang you can appreciate why. 
What is it that makes a hyped language?

That should not stop us from answering questions and writing 
docs. I just disagree with the aim of trying to make D a hyped 
language.

> The only time where it is an advantage to be small is when your 
> language design is changing. Once the language design is stable 
> there is only disadvantages in not having critical mass.

A language like GNU Guile has only a few developers - and they do 
great work.

D and its community are not small in my book. Large enough not to 
be endangered and still keep moving forward. Hard but soft. About 
right.




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