Feedback on Átila's Vision for D

[Ola Fosheim Grøstad]

On Thursday, 17 October 2019 at 10:48:57 UTC, Ola Fosheim Grøstad 
wrote:
> Having one hands-down-solid framework might matter more than 
> mirroring other platforms.

And that seems to be the only requirement for gaining traction 
actually, if we look at other languages.


HAS CORPORATE BACKING?

Despite people claiming otherwise, corporate backing itself means 
nothing.

Case in point: Dart.

Dart was created by Google, used internally, endorsed by Google 
and the committed to maintaining it.
Yet it was not adopted outside Google.

They added Angular support for Dart.
Made little difference, most people would rather go for 
TypeScript. Dart may have been better for Angular development, 
but not superior to TypeScript.

Then some people inside Google started building Flutter, which 
enable cross platform development with hot reload, for which 
there are few alternatives. And now Dart is getting traction.


DOES NOT HAVE COPORATE BACKING?

Python, Php and many other languages have found large niches 
without being propelled by any corporate entity.


LANGUAGE FEATURES?

Insufficient.

Case in point: Perl 6

Lots of features, many interesting, but adoption doesn't even 
register in comparison with the alternatives.


GOOD LANGUAGE SEMANTICS?

Mostly irrelvant.

Case in point: Php

Integration with webservers and HTML was more important, and for 
many people Php is still the best option for setting up a blog or 
forum.


LACK OF RESOURCES?

Nah, many (or most) languages have started out with 1-3 people as 
a side project and grown slowly over time.  Start out by having a 
limited scope, and only extend the scope as you get more people 
on board...