D programming language popularity

[Laeeth Isharc]

On Tuesday, 13 October 2020 at 07:24:23 UTC, aberba wrote:
> On Sunday, 11 October 2020 at 13:32:19 UTC, bachmeier wrote:
>> On Sunday, 11 October 2020 at 11:24:42 UTC, Imperatorn wrote:
>>> When looking for languages to learn, you have to start 
>>> "somewhere".
>>>
>>> How do we make D part of this "somewhere"?
>>
>> Why would someone use D? If the best you can do is come up 
>> with a list of technical features of the language, you have 
>> your answer as to why it's not on those lists. Not many people 
>> go looking for a programming language. They're looking for a 
>> solution to a problem.
>>
>
> I think this answers it. Rarely am I looking at the language 
> itself (for the job). So I think it's flawed to focus solely on 
> the language itself. If the ecosystem (of packages and 
> development tools) doesn't provide me with an easy way of 
> getting things done, then what's the point?
>
> So this is a primary reason why I'll choose one language over 
> another. Most coders I know are not capable nor willing to 
> build their own stuff when it's available out of the box in 
> other languages.

Depends on what kind of programming it is and the kind of people 
you have.  If most of the code is specific to your use and 
wrapping another library is a small cost versus everything else 
involved in solving your problem then you are going to arrive at 
a different answer from someone who is in a different situation.

The breadth of D comes in surprisingly useful.  For example a 
little language for writing reports - you certainly aren't going 
to need low level features for that.  Well, what if you want to 
allow users to configure reports with a lambda but want some 
restrictions on remote code execution by design.  Well maybe you 
could just build Linux containers into the little language by 
dropping down to syscall level.  First draft of that took a very 
long evening.  Then longer for others to fix some weird GC 
problems.  But now we have ephemeral containers built in to the 
language.

Our little language written in D can call good chunks of C++ too 
thanks to cling.  I'm not proud of it,  but it can compile C++ at 
runtime and call it.  So that opens up quite a few libraries.

Then plasticity and absence of boilerplate are also quite 
valuable.

I think it's a mistake to focus mostly on making D more 
accessible; a little doesn't hurt.  D will gain adoption from 
people like Weka.io - absolutely nobody would advise building a 
new storage startup using an emerging language that nobody at 
your startup knows.  But almost nobody would succeed in building 
the world's fastest parallel storage system (and not by a little) 
in a few years.  So D is like a secret weapon for disruptive 
innovation that's only available to people who are already quite 
unusual sorts of people.

We are hiring at least forty people to write D, and I don't think 
we have been the only ones hiring in the past couple of years.

But there's also no shortage of people who could write D; C++ 
programmers seem to pick it up quite quickly.