It is the year 2020: why should I use / learn D?

[NoMoreBugs]

On Friday, 16 November 2018 at 21:40:06 UTC, H. S. Teoh wrote:
>
> You have been grossly misinformed.  Walter works full-time on 
> D, and Andrei *quit* his career at Facebook in order to work 
> full-time on D. What else do you expect them to do to prove 
> their commitment to D??
>
>

It's hard to be critical of Walter and Andrei, it really is... 
but....

I would suggest, being more open to change, perhaps.

My impression of D at the moment, is that it just wants to remain 
stable, and that it has become too difficult to get change 
through the two gatekeepers (Walter and Andrei), and so people 
are not even bothering to try anymore.

Of course my impression could be wrong, but it is what it is.

But being stable in an environment where change is now 'the norm' 
for programming languages, could be the death nail for D.

Every other language is on the move...and it looks like it will 
stay that way for the foreseeable future.

C#/dotnet is (finally) poised to take over the world. Still a 
little way to go ;-)

The future of programming languages is about safer, more correct 
code, where the programmer can clearly show their intent - and 
all by default. You'll have to make the effort to write less 
safe, more obtuse code - whereas these days, you have to make the 
effort to create safe, correct code!

(e.g. private state within a module - nope. you have to 
re-architect just to get private state)

Anyway, as a developer (of anything), no.1 rule is: If you don't 
listen to your users, then you won't have any users soon enough.

I would like to quote Stroustrup (where he is speaking about the 
language he initially designed):

"We have two ways of going forward..one is to find a better 
alternative..and two..is to transform the old crud into the new 
stuff.. that's where the future is."

D has lots of 'crud' too. It needs transformation (one way or 
another).

Most importantly, is to remind Walter and Andrei, that D needs to 
serve it's users (not the other way around). Because there are 
alternatives to D.