[OT] Re: C's Biggest Mistake on Hacker News

[Laeeth Isharc]

On Saturday, 28 July 2018 at 13:55:31 UTC, Paolo Invernizzi wrote:
> On Saturday, 28 July 2018 at 12:43:55 UTC, Laeeth Isharc wrote:
>
>>>each project I
>>> start I give some very hard thought about which development 
>>> environment I'm going to use, and D is often one of those 
>>> options. The likely future of D on the different platforms is 
>>> an important part of that assessment, hence 'predicting' the 
>>> future of D, hard and very unreliable though that is, is an 
>>> important element in some of my less trivial decisions.
>>
>> Since you already know D you need to answer a different 
>> question.
>>  What's the chance the compiler will die on the relevant 
>> horizon, and how bad will it be for me if that happens.  
>> Personally I'm not worried.   If D should disappear in a few 
>> years, it wouldn't be the end of the world to port things.  I 
>> just don't think that's very likely.
>>
>> Of course it depends on your context.  The people who use D at 
>> work seem to be more principals who have the right to take the 
>> best decision as they see it then agents who must persuade 
>> others who are the real decision-makers.  That's a recipe for 
>> quiet adoption that's dispersed across many industries 
>> initially and for the early adopters of D being highly 
>> interesting people.  Since, as the Wharton professor, Adam 
>> Grant observes, we are in an age where positive disruptors can 
>> achieve a lot within an organisation, that's also rather 
>> interesting.
>
> A very interesting discussion... really.
>
> Perceptions, expectations, prediction...   an easy read I 
> suggest on the latest trends [1], if someone is interested...
>
> BTW, Laeeth is right in the last paragraph two. I was one of 
> the 'principal' who took the decision to use D in production, 
> 14 years ago, and he described the reasoning of that era very 
> well.
>
> Today I'm still convinced that the adoption of D is a 
> competitive advantage for a company, I definitely have to work 
> to improve my bad temper (eheh) to persuade my actual CTO to 
> give it another change.
>
> /Paolo (btw, I'm the CEO...)

Thanks for the colour, Paolo.

Yes - it's a competitive advantage, but opportunity often comes 
dressed in work clothes.  We're in an era when most people are 
not used to discomfort and have an inordinate distaste for it.  
If you're fine with that and make decisions as best you can based 
on objective factors (objectivity being something quite different 
from 'evidence-based' because of the drunk/lamppost issue) then 
there is treasure everywhere (to steal Andrey's talk title).  
Opportunities are abundant where people aren't looking because 
they don't want to.