D as a college language

[Sjoerd Nijboer]

On Friday, 4 May 2018 at 11:37:58 UTC, rikki cattermole wrote:
> First we need adoption, then maybe we can start designing a 
> course to help get them going.

Even with adoption, I think the exposure of D and its 
capabilities to teachers is too small for them to notice unless 
it is exposed to them as a new learning strategy for their 
students. After all, teaching is a difficult and time consuming 
skill and in my personal experience consumes almost all of the 
time a teacher has. Leaving very little time over for a teacher 
to explore new technologies such as D and design new courses 
around them. No teacher I know knows of the existence of D. And 
when I tell them they assume it is not important to learning 
computer science.

Therefore I was thinking something more along the lines of a set 
of free open source courses which use D to learn certain aspects 
programming and programming related subjects. That would most 
likely not draw in a lot of new programmers who start programming 
on their own. They tend to stick to the popular languages. 
Instead it would offer teachers who are looking for new new 
teaching material some material that is closely coupled to other 
material with a small set of technologies. Thus not forcing 
students to learn a new language every other course. I hope that 
that would invite teachers to use D as a language for learning.

On Friday, 4 May 2018 at 11:52:36 UTC, bauss wrote:
> 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.

Unfortunately true.
It just seems like a missed opportunity.