How programmers transition between languages

[rjframe]

On Tue, 30 Jan 2018 09:20:37 +0000, aberba wrote:

> That's one big potential mistake. Enterprises care about making money
> with whatever will help them do that (impress investors). Its developers
> who care about languages that help them write code that suites their
> requirements. The focus should be on developers not companies. People
> using D cannot be represented by Microsoft,
>   Sociomantic,  Weka,  etc. employees. Its of no use chasing after
> companies... make it useful and everyone else will come.

Well... if the goal is merely number of programmers, getting enterprises 
on-board is the easiest way to do it. Many (most?) professional 
programmers write nothing/very little after hours. Even if the programmers 
are on board, getting management to sign off may require throwing big 
names around.

 
>> If you want to draw people to the language (and, honestly, I wonder why
>> it matters so much to many here
> Its a simple math well understood since long ago.  The larger the
> army/workforce the better. Things get done. Walter always say here "Its
> left with someone to do the work". There other stuff he doesn't address
> including those outside language internals.

Most people that use a language (whether D, Rust, Python, C++) use their 
for their own projects, rather than for development of the language itself 
(I don't know about anyone else, but that's why I was looking for a new 
language in the first place). Increasing the number of programmers may 
just increase the number of requests for better infrastructure.

Better tooling isn't going to come from numbers; more likely from 
something like:

- A hobbyist that wants to build something, either for enjoyment or some
  other desire.
- An organization investing in tools to increase the productivity of its
  programmers.
- A partnership with a CS department somewhere, which might be mutually
  beneficial as students gain real-world experience arguing with engineers
  and graduate with code that they've written being used in production.


> Either someone is paid to care enough to do that (Like Google do with
> Go, Oracle with Java,  Jetbrains with Kotlin,  etc.) OR grow a
> community/workforce to collectively make that happen.

Like they always say, "It takes money to spend money." :)


>> Of course there are the usual trolls who don't seem to write much D,
>> but seem to be drawn like vampires to the energy of those who do.  Sad.
> 
> Someone who doesn't write D or have no stake in it's well-being will not
> waste a second in this forum.

People are people, the Internet's the Internet. Anything can happen.


> You don't know for sure. Remember we don't all use D the same way.

There's a DConf slogan for some year; it could highlight the diversity of 
uses/tasks/problems people solve with D.


--Ryan