Why do C++ programmers are not interested in D?

Guillaume Piolat first.last at gmail.com
Fri Nov 22 14:31:46 UTC 2019


On Tuesday, 19 November 2019 at 08:51:49 UTC, Pavel Shkadzko 
wrote:
> This spring I started looking into D and trying it for some of 
> the data analysis and scripting tasks. So, I am fairly new to 
> the language and all its toolset (mainly using Python and Scala 
> at work). I don't know C++. We do however have C++ engineers so 
> I asked them around. I was quite surprised that none of them 
> knew or even tried to use D. They of course heard about the 
> language but that's it.



I was a C++ programmer for a while in various set and settings. 
And I was very much interested in D since the first day of my 
first job with C++!

One of the common feature of the places using C++ is, for lack of 
a better word, conservativeness. The fact is that the part of C++ 
programmers that were most interested in new techniques moved 
long ago to C# or Java, because they _do_ fix a lot of the C++ 
problems.

When being a C++ programmer you are subtly trained to think C++ 
is all that ou need and "there are no alternatives". It is 
because everything takes longer, so you like the result of you 
work (pain?) with more passion.

At this point in time the set of people who genuinely should only 
use C++ (because only that compiler is provided) are mostly the 
embedded engineers, and people stuck in legacy.

Conservativeness affects the organization to the point it is also 
more likely to be a follower and react to the market, rather than 
innovate. C++ers in innovative companies takes up D very quickly.

With C++ you are also stuck in forever learning mode. Maybe 
learning the new move constructor stuff is going to make life 
easier? C++ is updated way faster than practionners can handle, 
strangely enough D has more respect for your time.

It's not very surprinsing that it takes a new language (Python) 
to foster macjine learning on the front stage.

You can read up on "diffusion of innovation" to see the social 
structures involved and the particular mindset of late adopters 
(versus "early adopters" like forum users here).

https://books.google.fr/books?id=4N4_MUkcQy4C&lpg=PA13&ots=82-BfO7WWP&dq=Scratch%20the%20surface%20and%20you%E2%80%99ll%20find%20these%20real-world%20inhabitants%20are%20filled%20with%20pessimism%20and%20despair&hl=fr&pg=PA13#v=onepage&q&f=false


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