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

[Laeeth Isharc]

On Monday, 15 April 2019 at 13:41:46 UTC, Dibyendu Majumdar wrote:
> On Monday, 15 April 2019 at 10:43:12 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:
>> On 4/15/2019 3:09 AM, Dibyendu Majumdar wrote:
>>> Ultimately it boils down to what you need to do to make a 
>>> living. If you had tons of spare money you can probably 
>>> afford to work on something you like or think is good; but if 
>>> you need to earn then you have to go where the demand is.
>> Laeeth Isharc just posted another list of job openings for D 
>> programmers at his company:
>>
>> https://digitalmars.com/d/archives/digitalmars/D/Has_D_failed_unpopular_opinion_but_I_think_yes_325826.html#N325995
>
> Sure but consider this:
>
> Firstly a handful of jobs posted by one company isn't going to 
> sway developers.
>
> Secondly it takes time and effort to master a language such as 
> D. Unless someone is hiring C/C++/Java/C# programmers and is 
> willing to let them learn D on the job, how are you going to 
> sway programmers to invest the time in D when they could be 
> improving their skills in other languages that have much more 
> demand?

Experienced C++ programmers don't seem to be deterred by the
prospect of having to learn D.  In fact they seem to see it as
a hard-to-manufacture positive signal about the culture.

I received an email from one person peripherally involved in the
community.  I asked his compensation expectations and he said X,
but I can negotiate if you're really using D.  He didn't even want
to write D at work mostly but he saw it as a positive signal.

I think the cost of learning D is small in relation to the cost of
having to learn the context and codebase, certainly for a younger
company.  For a large firm where everything is in place and it's
mostly maintenance possibly it would be different.

There aren't so many firms I am aware of with a similar approach
in finance; being open to unconventional approaches like using an
emerging language is a reflection of that, but really whether
someone is a good fit in other respects but just is put off by
some technical choices - I have not encountered that so far and
find it quite difficult to imagine.