Why didn't Micro Soft take D as their new language?

[Chris]

On Sunday, 14 June 2020 at 06:20:02 UTC, Laeeth Isharc wrote:
>
> In 1958 the average lifespan of a company listed on the S&P 500 
> was 61 years.  In 2016 it was less than 18 years.  McKinsey 
> believed then that by 2027 75% of companies listed at that time 
> will have disappeared.
>
> https://www.imd.org/research-knowledge/articles/why-you-will-probably-live-longer-than-most-big-companies/

There might be new companies springing up, which has been quite 
normal in IT over the last couple of years. The fact that 
startups are founded everyday makes it more important for a 
programming language to be in line with industry standards that 
developers expect and depend on (e.g. stability, tooling, 
platform integration).

>
> What happens to a language that is dominated by the sponsorship 
> of a single company if the company disappears?  It is possible 
> for it to survive, but it's going to be quite disruptive if the 
> company support disappears over quite a short period of time.
>
> Google, for example, has a big cash pile.  But it's core 
> business is advertising and according to eBay personalised 
> adverts cost 10x more, but are only 30% more effective.  What 
> do you suppose is going to happen to advertising spend over the 
> next twenty years should people become less materialistic, have 
> less disposable income and decide that maybe their core product 
> isn't worth what they currently do ?  Let's not discuss the 
> appeal of such a company to the most talented engineers and how 
> that might change.

Google is always mentioned in this context. However, it's the 
worst example, because everybody knows that one cannot depend on 
any projects started by Google. They might just kill it off next 
year. I don't know exactly why they do it and what their goals 
are, but I'm sure it pays in one way or another (attract 
investors, programmers, whatever). It looks like it's a strategy 
to put it mildly.

But you were talking about (single) company sponsorship. Symmetry 
is one of the two main corporate sponsors of D (the other one is 
Weka.io [1]). Symmetry it is a tech company, it deals with 
financial data. It's only natural that Symmetry's sponsorship 
would have an impact on how D's resources are used, i.e. the 
focus is on what servers Symmetry's interests. After all, 
Symmetry is hiring D programmers, many of them contributors and 
even members of the D Foundation like Tudor Andrei (not sure what 
status Atila Neves has now). This is fine.

On the other hand, people shouldn't wonder why D is not widely 
adopted (as in "Why didn't Microsoft..." etc.). D has become a 
special interest / niche language with a close-knit community, 
there is no room for the "bigger picture", no interest in 
bringing D into a shape that makes it fit for general purpose use 
throughout the IT industry, not just niches.

I only wish you communicated this clearly to the public.

> A language that is vital without large cash infusions from a 
> single sponsor is really much more able to survive adverse 
> conditions.  It's also better from that point of view if the 
> companies that do use it are spread across a range of domains 
> and stages of the process of production.



> D does have plenty of corporate users:
> https://dlang.org/orgs-using-d.html

The list has been quite static for years (very few newcomers).

> We are one of them, and I am aiming to hire 20 people to write 
> D over the next year or two.
>

Good for you and D programmers. Would you also consider hiring 
programmers to develop tooling and IDE plugins etc for D? In my 
experience crucial parts of D are usually left to a "hero" or 
"champion" who steps up (unpaid of course) or to bounties. How 
about hiring a few programmers to work exclusively on D for a 
year or two?

[1] https://dlang.org/foundation/sponsors.html