D as a college language

bauss jj_1337 at live.dk
Fri May 4 11:52:36 UTC 2018


On Friday, 4 May 2018 at 11:35:22 UTC, Sjoerd Nijboer wrote:
> So i'm a college student in and what bothers me is that there 
> seem to kind of assume programming languages don't evolve or 
> don't get replaced by better ones.
> Right now if you go to college you'll most likely get tought 
> c++, c# or java for any comp sci degree. While these languages 
> are industrial standards, they all have their drawbacks. And 
> one drawback that looks important for teaching is flexibility 
> in expressiveness.
>
> From my experience college students seem to have problems 
> translating their often declarative thought process into actual 
> semi compile-able code that runs in a given language.
> Since D seems to be a language that supports a lot of 
> programming paradigms very well, wouldn't it be beneficial to 
> learn people declarative programming using D for a little and 
> from there expose them to other programming styles in thesame 
> language to lower the barrier of entry?
>
> I think D could play a bigger role in education since its such 
> a "clean" language that is flexible but doesn't have any real 
> gotcha "features". Its also a language that could potentially 
> be used over someones entire college career as the primary 
> language. If this would be achieved there would be a higher 
> income flow into the industry of young D programmers which will 
> pollute other programmers with the D mind and featureset.

The biggest issue is that there isn't much industrial work done 
in D and that's why it's not taught.

When you're taught to program in specific languages, it's because 
those languages are where the job market is at.

I completely agree with your post however, but I don't see D ever 
taking off as an educational programming language in the majority 
of schools, because it doesn't have a job market to support it.

Say if you apply for a Java job and it says you have 10 years of 
experience programming in D and 3 years of experience programming 
Java, then another applicant has 7 years of experience 
programming in Java, but 0 experience with programming in D.

To the one hiring the person with 7 years of experience seem like 
a better choice, just because they generally have no idea what D 
is and what it offers. They don't know that if you program in D 
you can usually program very well, if not better than most 
general Java developers __when__ using Java. All they know is 
that they use Java and they're looking for the one with most 
experience in that field.

Until D becomes an industrial requirement, then it will not be 
taught.

That's why D is a hobby language.


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