D is dead (was: Dicebot on leaving D: It is anarchy driven development in all its glory.)

[Jonathan M Davis]

On Monday, September 3, 2018 12:26:57 PM MDT Chris via Digitalmars-d wrote:
> There is no real plan and
> only problems that someone deems interesting or challenging at a
> given moment are tackled. If they solve a problem for a lot of
> users, it's only a side effect. The advent of a D Foundation
> hasn't changed anything in this regard, and it seems not to be
> just a financial issue. It's the mentality. In other words, D is
> still unreliable, and if that what the community wants, fine, but
> instead of promoting it as a substitute for C/C++, Java etc. it
> should come with a warning label that says "D is in many parts
> still at an experimental stage and ships with no guarantees
> whatsoever. Use at your own risk." That would save both the
> language developers and (potential) users a lot of headaches.
>
> I think this sort of misunderstanding is the source of a lot of
> friction on this forum. Some users think (or in my case: thought)
> that D will be a sound and stable language one day, a language
> they can use for loads of stuff, while the leadership prefers to
> keep it at a stage where they can test ideas to see what works
> and what doesn't, wait let me rephrase this, where the user can
> test other people's ideas with every new release.

Plenty of people - whole companies included - use D for real projects and
products. It is an extremely powerful tool which can be used for real work.
Is it as polished as some other languages? Maybe not, but it's plenty stable
for real world use. And it's continually improving.

All programming languages and tools are "used at your own risk." They all
come with their own sets of pros and cons. If what you want is a language
that doesn't change much, then there are plenty of other choices, just like
there are plenty of languages that change all the time. Over time D has
become more stable, and it doesn't change anywhere near as rapidly as it
used to, but if you don't like how it works or is developed, then feel free
to go elsewhere. Those of use that stick around find that its pros outweigh
its cons. Plenty of folks disagree with us, and they've chosen different
languages, which is just fine.

In any case, I have better things to do than argue about whether D is a
solid, useful language or not. It's the language that I prefer. I'm going to
use it as much as I can, and I'm going to continue to contribute to it. If
you don't like where D is, and you don't think that it's worth your time to
contribute to it, then that's perfectly fine, but it's a waste of my time to
continue to argue about it. I spend too much of my time in this newsgroup as
it is, and this sort of argument doesn't contribute anything to improving D.

- Jonathan M Davis