About whether D / rust / golang can be popular.

[Dibyendu Majumdar]

On Thursday, 26 November 2020 at 05:46:59 UTC, zoujiaqing wrote:
> Whether a programming language can be popular depends on what?
>

I think many factors:

1. Timing and luck.
2. Highly innovative new feature - C was portable assembler, Java 
was safe and Java programs could run on multiple platforms, Go 
had goroutines, Rust has static memory analysis, D has easy to 
use templates and CTFE.
3. Backing by commercial organizations that are able to pump 
money and resources at it - JavaScript is an example, but Go 
without Google backing would not have succeeded, C++ has had 
enormous resources put on its development, Python has had 
enormous investment, C# and Rust ditto.
4. Support that programmers need in the real world - such as 
IDEs, debuggers, libraries etc.


D and Lua are perhaps two successful languages (i.e. sizeable 
users) that do not have proper financial support and resources. 
So development is dependent on few individuals spending unpaid 
time on it.

In my humble opinion, D had got it right as language before Rust 
and Go came along.
Go did GC better. And Rust does systems programming better.