How programmers transition between languages

[Michael]

On Sunday, 28 January 2018 at 15:36:17 UTC, bachmeier wrote:
> On Sunday, 28 January 2018 at 13:50:03 UTC, Michael wrote:
>> Most people at my university, outside of the computer science 
>> department, that are using languages like Python and R and 
>> MATLAB the most, are very aware of Rust and Go, but not D.
>
> I'd say Julia is getting a lot more attention than Rust or Go 
> for those users. And rightfully so.

I wasn't trying to relate these two sections. My point above was 
that people who don't really work with systems languages were 
still widely aware of the existence of new languages, while D 
remains relatively obscure.

>
>> I wonder if we do need to pay more attention to attracting new 
>> users just to get people talking about it.
>
> I'm not sure why those users would be interested in D at the 
> moment. D presents itself as a C++ replacement, discussions are 
> all about low-level stuff, garbage collection, and efficiency, 
> and new users are told to use Dub and learn about Git 
> submodules. That's not ever going to appeal to the R and Matlab 
> crowd. I have gotten others to start using D, and it was quite 
> easy. Just make an R package containing D code, they install 
> it, and then they call D functions from R. Few in this 
> community understand that style of programming though.

But D is fighting against Rust and Go, and struggling to pull any 
attention away from either. Go has found its niche, and has 
settled pretty well, but it has not been overwhelmingly adopted 
by the whole target audience. Rust, on the other hand, seems to 
be picking up those who have left Go.