GC/nogc status in docs

[Mike Parker]

On Monday, 13 July 2020 at 12:38:05 UTC, SealabJaster wrote:
> On Monday, 13 July 2020 at 11:16:07 UTC, aberba wrote:
>> The
>>> From what I have read,...
>> is all over the place.
>
> Perhaps we need a sort of "mythbusting" page.
>
> "
> MYTH: D's GC will **randomly** cause pauses in your program!
>
> FACT: D's GC only decides if it needs to run during 
> allocations, and collections can be manually disabled for hot 
> paths(GC.disable/GC.enable), as well as forced prematurely 
> (GC.collect).
> "
>
> And the like.

It won't make a bit of difference. Walter wrote the original 
version of the GC page way back when [1] (pretty sure I read in 
in 2004 or so and, with my Java background, found it a refreshing 
attitude). Didn't matter. I started the GC series on the blog 
partly to counter misinformation here and on reddit. Didn't 
matter (I find an opportunity to link to it most D threads on 
reddit). Whether it's GC or any of the other complaints we hear 
about, it won't matter. There will always be some number of 
people who have a lot to say about why they aren't using D, or 
any language, and it very often is not the same list of 
complaints you get from those who actually are using it. This has 
been the same surrounding every language I've ever used.

A mythbuster page isn't aimed at the people we need to reach. 
There are other ways to do that. Like, write games that use the 
GC and do a blog or video series on it. Write blog posts about 
real world D projects using the GC now, or focusing on any other 
D feature (what this algorithm or that container looks like in D, 
etc). Write about your own personal experience with D, the GC, 
Phobos, and so on.

This is the sort of stuff that attracts interest. And the people 
it attracts aren't going to be the ones you see in reddit threads 
throwing up one excuse after another about why they aren't using 
D. The ones it attracts are those who mention two or three years 
later in a forum thread "I first came to D when I saw a blog post 
about it on reddit".

I notice a lot of enthusiasm lately for promoting and 
evangelizing D, and that's a good thing! We will always need more 
material out there, yes. But IMO, it should be the sort of 
material that focuses on showing what D can actually do and how 
it's actually used as opposed to material that's purely 
promotional. We want people to stumble across it and think, "Hey, 
that's neat! I should check that out."

It believe it also helps when addressing misinformation directly 
in reddit/HN comments that we shouldn't argue or debate. Just lay 
some facts down, with links if necessary, and walk away. Only 
reply to responses that are crying out for more laying down of 
facts, but do so sparingly. Your target audience should rarely be 
the person you're replying to, whose mind you are almost 
certainly not going to change, but people reading the comment 
thread at any point in time thereafter.

[1] https://dlang.org/spec/garbage.html