The issue with D...

[Ecstatic Coder]

On Friday, 8 February 2019 at 21:59:45 UTC, JN wrote:
> On Friday, 8 February 2019 at 21:42:18 UTC, Ecstatic Coder 
> wrote:
>> I'm simply saying that nowadays many languages (Go, Python, 
>> etc) which appear to be more "popular" than D come with 
>> preinstalled web or gui libraries, and that **maybe** this 
>> helps them in convincing people to use them for this kind of 
>> development.
>>
>> Like them, D also has a very extensive standard library, but 
>> doesn't see the interest in having some basic http server 
>> classes provided by default, which I regularly regret.
>
> Perhaps. But for example when it comes to GUI, Python only 
> comes preinstalled with Tk, which isn't exactly the best GUI 
> library available. Go doesn't come with anything. I think what 
> these languages do better is messaging on what libraries are 
> available. Rust notably has the are we X websites: 
> https://www.arewewebyet.org/ http://areweguiyet.com/ 
> http://arewegameyet.com . In case of Python and Go, there's 
> usually a one defacto unofficial library for every usecase. 
> With D it's a bit trickier. Imagine you want to use a XML 
> library. First try - std.xml. But everyone tells you it sucks 
> and even documentation says it's not the best. So you try 
> external packages. You type "xml" in package search. That 
> doesn't work too good: http://code.dlang.org/search?q=xml . 
> After some more searching you learn about std-experimental-xml, 
> dxml, kxml. std-experimental-xml and kxml I don't even know if 
> they work with recent D versions. dxml seems to work, although 
> I don't know if it's considered release ready already. Similar 
> story for other libraries, especially json, or mysql wrappers.
>
> I don't think having all that stuff built-in is an advantage, 
> but knowing where to look definitely is.

I agree, but providing the same basic building blocks has allowed 
the Crystal and Go to buid LOTS of GREAT web frameworks.

And yes, after you can decide if you also want to use one of them 
for your big web app or directly use those same buildings blocks 
for your tiny web app.

For instance, I'm currently using Chi as Go web framework, and 
its source code is ridiculously small in size, with almost no 
dependencies. Those are two reasons why we are so many to love it.

Same reasons for the incredible success of Kemal in the Crystal 
community. Small code, almost no dependencies.

But in both languages there are MANY other great alternatives, 
also mainly or exclusively based on the standard http classes.

So having less choice might be a very good thing as well, but 
personally I still prefer to have the opportunity to choose what 
suits me best among a large panel of great solutions.