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

[Nierjerson]

On Sunday, 14 April 2019 at 12:34:12 UTC, Chris wrote:
> On Sunday, 14 April 2019 at 09:42:01 UTC, Laeeth Isharc wrote:
> [...]
>
>> Yes - the tolerance for experimentation is an important 
>> question.
>>  In firms where there isn't much of a tolerance for 
>> experimenting and for some of those experiments to fail then 
>> it's probably not the right environment to use D.  But I think 
>> the more interesting places to work are quite different.
>
> That's all good and well and I sincerely congratulate you on 
> your success. But what I see is the following divide: those who 
> say that D works for their business usually use it for very 
> specific purposes with a custom made ecosystem they've built up 
> over the years (as I did too) maybe bound to a particular 
> version of dmd or D1, and it's often for in-house purposes, 
> e.g. analyzing the stock market or optimizing internet ads or 
> machine learning. D is of course a good tool for that kinda 
> stuff (as is Lisp or Scala). But once you have to step out of 
> your biotope things get hairy. Once customers depend on your 
> software directly (as in: installing it directly on a machine, 
> interfacing with it via plug ins or accessing an API on your 
> web server), you're out in the wild with D as far as tooling 
> and stability (breaking changes) are concerned. In other words, 
> D is good for fenced off software that is built for very 
> specific purposes. When it comes to "general purpose", however, 
> it's a different story all together. This is what I'm trying to 
> convey.
>
> D was a personal success for you, good, but I'm sure in a few 
> years people will tell similar stories about Crystal, Nim and 
> whatnot. When you started using D it had the edge over other 
> languages in some respects, but other languages have caught up 
> and offer ease of use on top of that. This is what doesn't 
> register with the D community. Some users live happily in their 
> respective self-made D biotopes, while others want more, a 
> broader focus (and they mean well as they want D to be 
> suceessful in the world not just in niches). These are the two 
> factions, and it's the biotope faction that dominates the 
> Foundation and the forum, indeed the "biotopeism" in the 
> community is so far advanced that people have stared to fork D, 
> the ultimate stage of "Ok, I'll do my own thing.", which is of 
> course only a logical consequence of the insular mentality that 
> permeates D culture. You encourage people to do it themselves, 
> they will finally fork.
>

I agree with this. This is one of the major issues with the 
general type of personality of those in the D community.[which 
are going to have certain traits]

They fail to see the bigger picture. Most people are not like D 
users. Also most D users do not program long the same patterns. 
Basically D users are outliers but they believe they are 
representatives of the whole. This is only bad because it is 
myopic and advances D in a certain direction while limiting it in 
others. They can't understand the limitations because for them 
they are not limitations. They cannot see the big picture, the 
forest but they have no clue they can't and they think they do. 
This is problem of all humans, it's very difficult to get people 
that don't get it to get it unfortunately... maybe that is a good 
thing though ultimately.

Basically many cults are formed because of this. A cult starts 
off with a group of people with a central concept that they all 
agree on and work for. They attract others who have that similar 
principle.

there are only two things that happen:

1. Some people that connect to the group eventually leave because 
it isn't what they "thought". That is, their principle does not 
mesh and they are not willing change their principle and leave.

2. Some people that connect have exactly the same principle and 
so become part of the organization(these usually are the die hard 
fans)

3. Some people that connect have no real principle and latch on 
for various reasons but eventually either leave because it isn't 
what they want or stay for various reasons(acceptance, 
brainwashing, etc).

The outcome though is always the same, the "cult" forms. It 
consists of people accept the fundamental principles(which may 
change over time but at any point in time is reinforced as the 
principle which is generally accepted).

What happens though is that it becomes a positive feedback cycle. 
The principles are reinforced to the lower level people who then 
reinforce it back. If dissension(which is almost always valid) 
comes in to play, the dissenters are usually pushed out and this 
then reinforces the mentalities which become concentrated.

It's basically a sort of chemical reaction that occurs. There are 
so many cults. Basically all large organizations are cults. Some 
cults are just evil, but not all. But all cults usually end up 
very myopic. Religion works this way, corporations work this way, 
government works this way, even colleges work this way.




> As there is no way the two factions can communicate with each 
> other, there is only one logical consequence. The faction with 
> the broader focus (like myself) wanders off and what remains 
> are the die hard users who are happy in their biotope, so D 
> will remain a niche language and, of course, there's the danger 
> that some people will break off, fork D and add to the general 
> chaos (and you may read questions like this on Stackoverflow: 
> "Which D should I use? There are N implementations. Dragon, 
> Volt, BetterD, CleanD, SaneD...").


Yep, this is the problem with cults. You get it in your way of 
thinking. Just realize it is a natural tendency of the 
universe... if we were talking about religion we'd have Baptists, 
protestants, catholics, buddhists, etc... It it were governments 
we have communists, democracies, monarchies, dictatorships, etc...

It's not that humans do this, it is part of life to fracture like 
this. We see it in evolution. Species fracture in to sub-species. 
Materials fracture(like attracts like)

It's an unfortunate consequence of existence I believe. The 
problem is that most people don't understand these things at 
work. There is always some insane justification: e.g., "He's a 
moron that he thinks this verse means this, we need to push him 
out because he isn't aligned with our belief and I think he's 
must be a sinner! I think I hear him talking about sacrificing 
sheep, we can't have that! We are allowed only to sacrifice 
cows!".

Almost always the fracturing is based in ignorance. The reason is 
that the truth does not fracture, it is what it is.

See, both you and I are probably completely different, have come 
to similar conclusions, ideas... but even our ideas are 
different... because we are different. I'm sure we can understand 
our differences, but even if we formed some organization 
eventually our misunderstands(or ignorance) will cause fractures 
between us... although maybe we could deal with it better. My 
point is that these issues are much deeper than any singular 
individuals. I also believe that the better one understands it 
the better one can adapt and use it for positive things(I do 
think there is a "direction" to the universe, fracturing might be 
a way to isolate the bad things and get rid of them, survival of 
the fittest type of thing at play).

Unfortunately people who are deepest in the cult are the hardest 
to change. It's easy to leave something when you are on the 
fringes.  The seed crystals(What we are talking about is a sort 
of crystallization process that takes place in all things) are 
the generators that the molecules attach too and grow off of.  
The seeds end up surrounded and "supported" by all the other 
similar molecules. The outside has to dissolve before the seed 
does(since it's generally a uniform crystallization). I don't 
know if this is true, but there is evidence things work this 
way... and if it is true, it means that we will never get 
anywhere with our logic. No matter what kinda of works we use, it 
will essentially be worthless.

That is, we can't convince the leadership here that there is 
another way(rather, that there is a broader way) because the 
universe isn't going to let that happen. At most if we wanted 
things to change it would have to be from the outside in, but 
hoping for an inside out change is trying to move a mountain with 
a spoon... it can be done, and sometimes it is done, but I'm not 
going to do it and I doubt you will want to try to do it either.

My main point with all this is that maybe these things are beyond 
our abilities to change. Change seems so easy for some and so 
hard for others(and depends on what is to be changed). It may 
have nothing to do with those individuals and completely to do 
with the universe forcing them not change(although, I think we 
both would agree that we can't prove this is absolutely true so 
it's worth trying to move the mountain... who knows, maybe there 
is a secret button somewhere that will teleport it to where we 
want!)