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

[bachmeier]

On Friday, 19 April 2019 at 14:28:26 UTC, burjui wrote:
> The general feeling I get about D management is that it has 
> brains, but lacks balls and focus. The typical response to that 
> is: "Yeah, well, we are a community-driven project, we cannot 
> order anyone. We are not obliged to do anything particular, so 
> we do what we feel like doing. So if you want something 
> particular to be done, go and do it yourself."

I'm guilty of saying that. Not because I take joy in it, but 
because that is reality. Perhaps that can be blamed on 
management, but only to the extent that they haven't been able to 
secure funding to hire developers.

> But he wants to abstract himself from that and be seen as just 
> a part of the community, not as a figure of authority. At the 
> same time, he has strong opinions on certain topics (bugzilla 
> issue 2043 comes to mind) and it does not seem that it would be 
> productive to even create PRs for those, as they are not likely 
> to be accepted. That is very convenient: "I don't want to be in 
> charge and do what is needed rather than what I like 
> (refactoring, C++ interop, custom codegen that nobody really 
> needs because LLVM and whatnot), but I also know better what 
> should and what should not be done with the language". It is 
> too late, though, many people have invested too much in D.

A good example of this, as I mentioned there is the latest thread 
on fixing Dub's problems. There are two people who want to have 
the final say on everything, but they are completely silent about 
a critical piece of official infrastructure because it's not 
interesting to them. There is plenty of manpower willing to do 
the work, but at this point there are useless conversations on 
the mailing list because nobody has authority to make decisions, 
so nothing will come of those conversations.

> it's a perfect example of what a language should be: a solid 
> foundation, not a mine field with candy trees. Yeah, it has 
> corporation support, but it's not the key to its success. The 
> key is principles and determination. These guys are focused, 
> concerned about language soundness and are willing to do 
> research and hard work to ensure, that the sole Rust compiler 
> is as good, as it can be practically.

I would definitely not consider it "what a language should be" 
but it is a well run project. It's not just the core group 
working on the compiler though. It's also the much larger 
community of developers building third party libraries and 
practical projects and blogging about the language and spamming 
HN and discussions of other languages to generate interest. I 
blame the larger community for the lack of interest in D much 
more than Walter or Andrei. Rust attracted a more productive 
community than D.

> I have been a D fan for more than 10 years, but I had to stop 
> using it. And if it sounds like I am talking about drugs, it 
> should be. Now, looking back, I cannot justify all the time and 
> effort I spent on it.

I'm lucky that for my use (as an improved C to interoperate with 
other languages) D works very well. I'm beginning to think my 
example is rare.