D beyond the specs

[Joakim]

On Friday, 16 March 2018 at 14:45:28 UTC, Guillaume Piolat wrote:
> On Friday, 16 March 2018 at 11:44:59 UTC, Chris wrote:
>> Would it be possible to find out at DConf in Munich why 
>> exactly D is so popular in Germany (my impression) and in 
>> other countries of Europe (and that general post code) like 
>> France, Italy, GB, Romania and Russia etc.?
>
> Made-up theory that probably isn't worth anything without 
> measurements:
>
> In providing an improvement over C++, including more safety and 
> GC, D (unwillingly) positionned itself being spiritual 
> successor in the Wirth's family of language. And Niklaus Wirth 
> was from Switzerland so _perhaps_ the nearby territory is 
> already more favourable to alternatives native languages.
>
> Let the speculation begin!

Huh, that's pretty much what I was going to say,  particularly 
with Paulo always bringing up Oberon in here. :)

Let me add to the theory: the US private fund-raising enviroment 
was quicker to take risks with such quick-and-dirty tech, which 
led to Sun and Microsoft pushing UNIX and Windows and C and C++ 
to global dominance.  For example, the Silicon Valley investors, 
used to putting millions into chips, quickly starting dumping 
money into these software startups too:

https://stratechery.com/2018/lessons-from-spotify/

The current wave of iOS/Android and Obj-c/Java is merely the next 
iteration from Silicon Valley.

However, let me posit a change in the environment that now favors 
different kinds of tech. I'd argue open source is a much more 
powerful force these days than those prior factors. Rather than a 
single company driving a language or OS, you have to have many 
contributors, both companies and individuals, for open source or 
you'll get swamped by the crowd, which is why Android and 
Java/Swift have been mostly open-sourced.

This led to the OSS scripting languages that focused on ease of 
use- python, ruby, etc.- and a race to the bottom, ie javascript 
and php. It's now leading to thoughtful attempts to dislodge 
C/C++: D, Nim, Rust, Swift, Crystal, etc.

My point is that it appears that the time of local tech champions 
winning out is ending.  With open source, all of us all over the 
world can now take part in building out the foundational tech. :)