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

[Nierjerson]

On Friday, 12 April 2019 at 16:42:46 UTC, Timon Gehr wrote:
> On 12.04.19 17:25, Nierjerson wrote:
>> 
>> Yeah, you can ignore popularity if it it's meaningless.
>
> That seems obvious.
>
>> It just shows your ignorance or your selfishness or both.
>> ...
>
> Right, because supporting an open source language and toolchain 
> is so selfish and ignorant. I won't try to force you to use it 
> for your own good. If that's selfish, so be it.

Um, I didn't say that. I said that if you only support the 
language features that you use then it is selfishness. There is a 
difference, you are trying to warp what I said to suit your 
beliefs.

What I'm saying is that there are a lot of D users that use D for 
X... and people that use it for Y and have Y-issues are 
irrelevant for these people. For them, because D does X well they 
are happy, and they careless about the other users. That is 
selfishness.


>> Once the popularity of D = 0 D is dead. That is a fact.
>
> As long as I am using it, the popularity of D ≠ 0. Fact.
> (In fact, D has plenty of users.)

And you fail to realize it doesn't have to be 0 to be practically 
dead. It's a theoretical statement and all theoretical statements 
constrain reality. I mean, are you going to make me spell out 
every little detail just to prove you wrong? Do we have to figure 
out exactly how many users D requires to not end up dead?

>> If you think D is so great
>
> It's fine, not great, but better than would-be competitors for 
> my current use cases.

My point above. For YOU. You care less about other users and 
their use cases. D is fine for you, so why do you want to keep it 
bad for others rather than help it work for them too? That is 
very selfish.


>
>> then why would you not want it to be more popular?
>
> When everything else is the same, having more users is a 
> liability.

True, but one can make such blanket statements about everything. 
It's nonsensical in practice because nothing can ever be the 
same. The amount of manhours that are invested in D is 
proportional to the "popularity". By forcing everything else the 
same you remove that condition and so it then becomes pointless.

This isn't a business selling things where the more customers are 
more liability because one can just raise the prices of their 
product to decrease the customers but maintain the same revenue. 
There isn't a trade off here with D's community. The larger the 
community the more investment those people put in to D and that 
helps D as a language and compiler grow and that helps everyone 
that uses it and draws in more people who invest more time.

These people invest their time willingly, they don't have to pay 
anything else for it. There is a huge difference.


> In any case, if you want to invest time and effort into a 
> marketing campaign, be my guest. I'm not actively opposed to 
> popularity, even though it would probably further diminish the 
> average quality of discourse on the forums.

Popularity automatically does not cause problems. It is the state 
of the human race that causes the problems. If the logic is "We 
don't want D popular because it will cause problems in the 
forums" then D is shooting itself in the head. There are ways to 
alleviate such problems so one doesn't have to sacrifice one for 
the other.

The logic then should be "Ok, we need to build a larger community 
for D, we know it that this will generally create a problem A. 
How can we minimize the effects of A"?

This is basic calculus. Even computer scientists deal with 
min/max type of problems. You don't throw the baby out with the 
bath water, you find a balanced solution that gives the results 
one wants. Meaning one finds appropriate solutions for the 
appropriate problems.


>> If D is better then C++ in every regard
>
> (That's not even close to what anyone in this thread claimed.)
>

That is why I said "IF" it was a hypothetical.

>> then why would you not want everyone using D instead of C++?
>> ...
>
> Competitive advantage.
>
>> See, your perceptions are illogical and detrimental to the 
>> very thing you claim to like.
>
> D is a tool. You are arguing as if it was a person whom I wish 
> to marry.

lol, I do not think I was posting to you specifically.

In some ways it is someone you wish to marry, or you already have.

How many years have you invested with D? Seriously, when you are 
on your death bed those years might mean something. Your time 
should be important too you and so wasting it on things you don't 
take seriously will only harm you. It is your choice to live your 
life that way but, for example, you shouldn't marry the first 
broad that you see because that is years of your life that are 
"wasted"(in the sense that if you could spend them better). Most 
people though just accept whatever and they end up paying for 
you. You can't get the time back so why not make sure it is 
invested well?