Could D be used by Jonathan Blow rather jai language?

[Ola Fosheim Grøstad]

On Friday, 20 November 2020 at 12:30:22 UTC, aberba wrote:
> That's kind of how I use D. The language for prototyping, 
> scripting, development (web, system), teaching, competitive 
> programming. I don't have to relearn a new language.

As programmers gain more experience learning a new language is a 
small challenge. What is expensive is figuring out how to use 
libraries and frameworks (and to find the ones you need). Also 
there is a heavy transition costs if you have to port your own 
libraries/code bases.

> My only issue is the ecosystem for some of those areas 
> (embedded, cloud
> SDKs) are still not as matured as I would like them to be. But 
> that's only a matter of time. D has improved a lot since I 
> found it.

I think one key property of a language and the culture around it 
is to provide standards for how to write libraries so that you 
don't have to learn peculiarities of each library and to make 
them interoperate fluently.

E.g. Python had a rather strong culture on Stack Overflow with a 
lot of debate of what was idiomatic or not. Unfortunately, 
libraries like numpy/matplotlib come with their own hacky ways of 
doing things, and as such outliers become more widespread you get 
a more mishmash programming experience.

Designing both language and a culture for evolving the eco system 
certainly isn't easy. You probably need a well funded foundation 
to build a solid widespread ecosystem that other programmers 
mimic. A big standard library is one way to do that, but then 
that design has to be really solid, so you need some very skilled 
coordinators and funding.