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

[Chris]

On Monday, 26 November 2018 at 18:01:08 UTC, welkam wrote:
> On Monday, 26 November 2018 at 10:19:14 UTC, Chris wrote:
>> I may well be that Walter and other core devs really feel that 
>> they are making great progress when porting DMD to D and stuff 
>> like that.
>
> Actually D had postponed porting from C++ to D for a long time. 
> Other languages like nim and jai from beginning had their 
> implementation done in itself. Secondly translating was done 
> with a tool and my guess didnt took much of work for DMD 
> backend. Well compared to what would it take to make android 
> app development easy. Thirdly compiler being in D means more 
> people from community can participate in compiler development. 
> I started twiddling with compiler because it was mostly in D 
> and would not touched it if it was in C++.

Fair enough, but again it's a very narrow focus, and people 
interested in it can "twiddle around". For deployment we have LDC 
anyway. A language needs a broader focus, i.e. infrastructure, 
tools and, yes, an IDE.

>> Indeed, their own projects might be emotionally rewarding and 
>> trigger feelings of euphoria.
>
> Its clear you havent read single whitepaper on behavioral 
> psychology or neuroscience.

If you have worked with people (and you know a bit about 
yourself) you don't need to read all that to know how people feel 
and what motivates them.

>> A project like D cannot survive if it's only driven by 
>> personal preferences.
>
> The good thing is that its not only driven by personal 
> preference. Now we have d foundation and companies who sponsor 
> work on libraries like Symmetry Investments. This trend will 
> only increase but not at the speed you or I want.

Again, often a very narrow focus. Bits and pieces here and there, 
special interest.

>> In my own job I sometimes work on interesting and emotionally 
>> rewarding stuff, but I also have to do the head wrecking and 
>> boring stuff that may not even be related to writing code - 
>> boring but necessary.
>
> You compare open source with for profit company again. We all 
> do boring but necessary stuff in paid jobs. Your not exception. 
> What matters here is that you expect other people who worked 8h 
> of boring stuff to go home and work on more boring stuff for 
> free. These kind of people are rare and you are not one of them 
> yourself.

Well, I used to contribute a bit. Bug reports, the odd PR for 
dlang and other simple stuff. I donated money twice (I think, or 
was it three times?). I was seriously thinking about contributing 
more, but then

1) I had to spend time fixing my own code due to dmd updates
2) I saw the whole PR / priorities culture (or lack thereof)
3) I thought, if my own code breaks randomly or is no longer 
"state-of-the-art" due to a new paradigm being introduced, what 
happens if I make a contribution? Will I have to re-write the 
code forever and ever and ever like poor Sisyphus?
4) regarding stuff like ARM and JNI, I would have helped to 
improve it, my own experience / setup would have trickled into 
the project. However, it took too long until it became a real 
option, and other technologies emerged in the meantime, 
technologies that where closing the gap ignored by D.

Yes, I would have worked on boring stuff too. People contribute 
for various reasons, e.g. self-interest, for the glory, gratitude 
(give something back) or because they have / share a vision or an 
idea. Usually it's a mix of all of them. (Except for gratitude, 
everything else is more or less self-interest).

Now you may discard all of my points above as nonsense, because 
maybe they are not mentioned in papers about behavioral 
neuroscience and psychology (I've actually read quite a bit about 
behavioral biology), but those were my thoughts.

>> It's not just a question of the - by now famous - $1,600 a 
>> month. I've seen other open source projects thrive because of 
>> a different community culture.
>
> Stop being vague and start naming open source projects that are 
> as big scope as D and thrive without corporate sponsorship. We 
> might learn something.

There's loads, look at Linux distros and libraries that are still 
used everywhere.

>> it takes ages to get a review / accepted, then why bother?
>
> You would be surprised what a little bit of money can change 
> and Nicholas already doing good work
> https://www.flipcause.com/secure/cause_pdetails/NDUwNTY=
>

Nicholas is a legend. Fair play to him. I wish him luck and hope 
he'll succeed!

> Oh and about fixing autodecode 
> https://youtu.be/Lo6Q2vB9AAg?t=4044