Has D failed? ( unpopular opinion but I think yes )

[Radu]

On Friday, 12 April 2019 at 11:52:18 UTC, Chris wrote:
> On Friday, 12 April 2019 at 09:56:48 UTC, Nierjerson wrote:
>> On Friday, 12 April 2019 at 07:35:05 UTC, Tofu Kaitlyn wrote:
>>
>> Yes D has failed if the goal is wide adoption. [...]
>
> Well, what can I say that hasn't been said before (including 
> this thread)? Since I said good-bye to D last year my 
> productivity has increased incredibly. I read a few days ago 
> that Joakim had left the community (he once asked me why my 
> attitude had changed so drastically). And you know what, it 
> made me kinda sad. Do things like that even register with the D 
> Foundation  and / or community? One answer was "this would be 
> an excellent topic for this year's GSoC", which is a total and 
> utter lack of respect (although I hasten to say that I think 
> the poster wasn't aware of this and didn't intend it this way). 
> It has never occurred to the D leadership that Android and iOS 
> are more important to developers than introducing yet another 
> RefFancyTemplateCTFERangeAllocator which is memory safe, but 
> not really, but it will be after DIP2001.
>
> Now there is talk of re-writing D, after the umpteenth half 
> baked feature was introduced. We'll see, we'll see. IMO, the 
> trouble really started when the D Foundation was set up. 
> Instead of streamlining and stabilizing D, the whole thing 
> turned into a closed shop with a "Hey, we are the lads" kinda 
> attitude, and any CS theory or fashion of the day would finally 
> be half baked into the language without a second thought. 
> Without paying attention to users and the answer to complaints 
> would be "we want to turn D into a functional style memory safe 
> [...] language, that's why we had to introduce RefFancy, so eff 
> your code!", except it still isn't and RefFancy has to be 
> removed or replaced! Who would have guessed it would be at 
> loggerheads with FancyRange!?
>
> It's the year 2019 (D is almost 20 years old), a lot of new 
> languages have a sounder approach than D, they see what works 
> and what doesn't, what programmers need (e.g. ARM) and what 
> they don't need. Which is being pragmatic, and being pragmatic 
> is a thing that D claims to be. A joke. Programmers need to get 
> sh*t done, you know?
>
> And apart from all the fancy feature madness, there's this 
> arrogant attitude towards users. To avoid criticism my words 
> were twisted in such an obvious and blatant way that it was 
> just ridiculous. And what's really funny is that mistakes made 
> by the leadership, and the leadership alone, are now being 
> socialized as in "the community this, the community that, and 
> this has to change!". Ah, give me a break.
>
> The sad thing is that D had it all long before younger 
> languages had it, but it preferred to drink all its money in 
> the pub, dreaming of fancy features, mañana, mañana...
>
> PS For D zealots: add your favorite insult here, e.g. "entitled 
> [...]"

Interesting.

While I don't know your work with Dlang, I quite regret having 
Joaking leaving the community.
He contributed greatly to the Android port, code reviews, and 
LDC, to name a few. He helped me alot with reviews and feedback 
on bugs.
I hope he would change his mind someday.

I'm fascinated on what makes you, or any other poster vent on the 
forums?
Assuming trolling is out of the question.

If you find that Dlang doesn't work for you, and there is no 
match between expectations and reality, I think one would just 
mind their business and move on.
One would think that having so vivid reactions on things that 
don't work out for you, would mean that you have a vested 
interest.

There are open PRs that sit on Github rotting, you have a list of 
bugs that you added but you got no response or some 
unsatisfactory response, you donated a bunch of money for a goal 
that was not realized. Something?

I can see that constructive criticism can be applied anytime, 
this is desired and healthy. There are really annoying things 
with Dlang management, I really hate the whole Interpolated 
Strings debacle for example, but I see that there is wish to 
improve and steps are made to fix them.

Anyhow, as strange as it sounds, I just wish that there would be 
more of Joakim's type in the detractors list then whatever we 
have now.