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

[Chris]

On Tuesday, 4 September 2018 at 01:36:53 UTC, Mike Parker wrote:
> On Monday, 3 September 2018 at 18:26:57 UTC, Chris wrote:
>
>>
>> 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.
>

First of all, thanks a lot for your answer. I appreciate it. I 
have to know where I'm standing in order to be able to plan 
ahead. I don't think this is unreasonable.

> D is not a petri dish for testing ideas. It's not an 
> experiment. It's a serious language. Walter, Andrei, and 
> everyone involved in maintaining and developing it want to see 
> it succeed. They aren't just treading water, wasting everyone's 
> time. And I know you keep hearing this, but I'll say it anyway: 
> most of the development is based on volunteer work, and trying 
> to get volunteers to do anything they don't want to do is like 
> asking them to voluntarily have their teeth pulled when they 
> don't need to.

I have no doubt at all that Walter, Andrei et al are a 100% 
serious about D, as in "a professional tool" and I do not 
question their expertise and experience. However, for a bit more 
than a year I've been under the impression that scarce resources 
are spent on features and details that are not critical to 
production when you use D, while more basic things that are 
sometimes not related to D as such are put on the long finger.

> Walter has said that people come to him and ask what they 
> should work on. He provides them with a list of priority tasks. 
> Then they go off and work on something else. That's the nature 
> of unsponsored open-source development and has been the biggest 
> challenge for D for years.

I can imagine that. This is why volunteers are not the way to go 
when it comes to core development and the ecosystem. This is why 
foundations with a lot of funding and IT companies spend a lot of 
resources on these two aspects.

> I have high hopes that some of this can be turned around by 
> raising more money and I have long-term plans to try and 
> facilitate that over the coming months. With more money, we can 
> get people to work on targeted tasks even when they have no 
> vested interest in it. We can pull in full-time coders, maybe 
> get someone to oversee PR reviews so they don't stay open so 
> long, fund development of broader ecosystem projects.
>
> There isn't anyone involved in the core D development who isn't 
> aware of the broader issues in the community or the ecosystem, 
> and they are working to bring improvements. I have been around 
> this community since 2003. From my perspective, it has been one 
> continuous march of progress. Sometimes slow, sometimes fast, 
> but always moving, always getting better. And right now there 
> are more people involved than ever in moving it forward.
>
> Unfortunately, there are also more demands on more fronts than 
> ever. There are longtime users who become increasingly 
> frustrated when the issues that matter to them still aren't 
> resolved, newcomers who have no context of all the progress 
> that has been made and instead hold D in comparison to Rust, 
> Go, and other languages that have stronger backing and more 
> manpower. That's perfectly legitimate.

Which is what I've been talking about in this thread. D is too 
old to live with its parents :) Too many people already use it in 
production or are interested in it. There are a) longtime users 
who still have to put up with OSS style hacks and are growing 
tired of it (after years of putting in a lot of effort). There 
are b) new users who are put off by the lack of a smooth 
ecosystem. And both groups are told that "that's the way we do 
things around here".

> And of course, low manpower and funding aren't the complete 
> picture. Management also play a role. Both Walter and Andrei 
> have freely admitted they are not managers and that they're 
> learning as they go. Mistakes have been made. In hindsight, 
> some decisions should have gone a different way. But that is 
> not the same as not caring, or not understanding/

Exactly. As I said in an earlier message, it's not just the money 
(or the lack thereof), it's the approach. In my opinion Both 
Walter and Andrei should hire a manager who is not involved in 
the core development. If you're involved in the core development 
you cannot be managing things at the same time and "learn as you 
go along". That's a recipe for disaster. It's not a good idea to 
mix management and development because they are two completely 
different things, and you might end up not being good at any of 
them.

A manager could lay down a practical road map based on what users 
need _most_, secure funding and direct the funding towards the 
most urgent issues. Everyone should do what they're good at, only 
in this way you can get optimal results.

> So please, don't attribute any disingenuous motives to any of 
> the core team members. They all want D to succeed. Identifying 
> core problems and discussing ways to solve them is a more 
> productive way to spend our bandwidth.

Never would I attribute "disingenuous motives" to the members of 
the core team. But sometimes perceptions are different and one 
might not see the wood for trees so it's good to get input from 
the outside now and again. The reason I got a bit sarcastic or 
polemical at times is that I didn't get a real answer (until 
now), especially at a moment when I'm reassessing my programming 
options for the future. And I don't seem to be the only one 
either who asks himself "to D or not to D?". Other (new) 
languages now have many features that made me pick up D in the 
first place, and they offer a smoother and more comprehensive 
experience on top of that. I don't think this should be taken 
lightly by the core team / D Foundation. Don't forget, for 
various reasons developers are keen on testing new stuff at the 
moment.

I only posted here to raise awareness of the issues, I could have 
just left silently as many others have. And yes, I have better 
things to do than to be on this forum, like testing my future 
optionst.