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

[Laeeth Isharc]

On Saturday, 17 November 2018 at 00:19:34 UTC, NoMoreBugs wrote:
> 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.

Listening to users may often be a good idea.  Politely doing what 
you believe to be best whatever users may think may well on 
occasion be an even better idea.  Not that I see any hint that's 
how the language leadership think - that's just my personal 
opinion about the limitations of democracy in a popular sense and 
the role of leadership in creative endeavours.  It's quite often 
the case that users don't know what they will want.  Was the 
introduction of attributes universally welcomed?

More importantly than that I think there's an implicit unexamined 
assumption in what you wrote that what people on the forum write 
(it's fascinating on these kinds of threads the number of 
accounts that pop up who I never recall having posted before, 
whatever that may mean) is in any way generally representative of 
committed users of D.

Its a particular subset that post on the forums at all, and 
plenty of people active on the forums don't express themselves on 
these kinds of threads.  A subset of a subset.

I know a few people active in the development of the language and 
library that don't say much on the forums because they feel 
making pull requests are more productive.

The larger commercial users of D that I have met personally (I am 
a commercial user myself) barely post at all because they have 
work to do.

And to return to an old point.  It's much better to focus on 
people that like what you are doing and already using your 
product than those who say "if only you would do X, D would be 
huge".  That's the nature of the innovator's dilemma and also if 
one is to be persuasive then it's helpful to remember that talk 
is cheap, whereas making a closely reasoned argument accompanied 
by skin in the game - now that is much more persuasive.