How programmers transition between languages

[TooHuman]

On Sunday, 28 January 2018 at 18:54:34 UTC, Laeeth Isharc wrote:
> On Sunday, 28 January 2018 at 13:50:03 UTC, Michael wrote:
>> [...]
>
> That's what you would expect, because D is a very ambitious 
> language, which means its natural user base is much more spread 
> out and less highly concentrated.  And beyond that, most code 
> is enterprise code that's closed source, and whilst the web 
> guys talk a lot and influence the culture, enterprise guys talk 
> much less and just do their thing quietly.  Even in our world, 
> how often do you see the people using D get involved in forum 
> discussions?  Sociomantic, Weka, Ebay, and so on.  (Or 
> Microsoft - did you know that D was used in their COM team?  
> They didn't exactly send out a press release...)  A little bit, 
> but only a little in relation to their use of the language.  If 
> you're trying to accomplish something in a representative 
> enterprise context with lean resources, you don't have much 
> time to talk about what you are doing.
>
> [...]

You're absolutely right in that, for a language like D with such 
a broad range of features, that it should absolutely be marketed 
as a generalist language. However, the kinds of "killer apps" I 
think people are talking about, are likely referring to apps that 
simply shine a spotlight on D, and allow people to discover all 
of the things that they can also do in D. A variety of "killer 
apps" would therefore be helpful, but any attention shown to D 
would be good. At the moment, it feels like the language is 
somewhat peddling about but not really going anywhere. I'm sure, 
as we've seen from downloads and things, that this isn't exactly 
the case, but we're not seeing Go levels of adoption, or even 
Rust levels of adoption.