Future of D 2.x as stable/bug fix, and what's next for D 3.x

[aberba]

On Thursday, 3 September 2020 at 04:17:58 UTC, Laeeth Isharc 
wrote:
> On Wednesday, 2 September 2020 at 01:49:23 UTC, Eljay wrote:
>> On Tuesday, 1 September 2020 at 15:23:10 UTC, IGotD- wrote:
>>> I didn't quite understand that sentence. What is the problem 
>>> with the current design that prevents D from gaining momentum?
>>
>> D does have momentum.
>>
>> Some obstacles as I see them are:
>>   * no corporate/government/academic sponsor backing the 
>> language
>>   * garbage collection
>>
>> How one courts a sponsor, I do not know.
>
> I think its a mistake to think that a single corporate sponsor 
> is the answer.
>
> Companies have their own distinct interests and values and 
> those arent going to be identical with those of the language 
> ecosystem and community.  Especially for a publicLy-listed 
> company yet those tend to be the ones that have the resources 
> to be a significant sponsor.
>
> whats the use case for D?  well, look at how its uses by 
> organizations that use D today.  it has incredible breadth and 
> there is no single industry that pops out.  its about the kind 
> of people more I think.
>
> Having a single sponsor is quite dangerous too.  what will 
> happen to Rust given the funding problems Mozilla has after 
> their chronic mismanagement?  maybe it will be fine but at 
> least the link with Mozilla is a source of brittleness.
>
> government funding these days has most uncertain benefits in an 
> environment of budgetary constraints and rising geopolitical 
> tension.
>
> I think more funding would be better but would be best for D if 
> it comes from more than one source.  and I think this will 
> naturally happen in time.

I couldn't say any better than this. The whole Mozilla-rust is 
clearly an example of cooperate vs community interest.

We need sponsorship as every Open Source initiative at some point 
does. It doesn't really matter where it comes from (we do 
appreciate where it comes from though). The opportant things is 
those sponsors don't influence the direction of the language 
based solely on their cooperate interest... financially or with 
their engineering workforce. Talking about engineering, D also 
need engineers from cooperates...payed or not to contribute to 
open source. That's something not talked about enough but makes 
huge difference. Developers, developers, developers. Isn't that 
part of why we need money?

Unfortunately is very uncommon to get cooperate sponsorship from 
some known companies without their influence in decision making. 
I'd rather have a independent language that a cooperate interest 
driven language.

And D is doing fairly fine and its only getting better. It might 
not be as fast as you might want it but it's moving... which can 
be both good and bad. Yeah good as in careful decision making cus 
some of these decisions Will become a permanent burden if not 
done right.


The idea that other languages are doing well due to GitHub stars 
and popularity contest is unfounded. I doesn't meant much. 
Popular doesn't necessarily mean good or people are ACTUALLY 
using it for production. Example is Rust being the most Loved 
language on stackoverflow even though ONLY 3% or so have actually 
used it. How's that even a statistic? That's what I call hyped. A 
successful language will MOSTLY have to be useful on its own for 
those who try it.


The thing about GC vs nogc by default is purely based on what you 
are used to and there's nothing stopping anyone from doing the 
other. And the friction is constantly being improved.

Those who say: if X had B instead of A... I would use it are 
MOSTLY never really interested IMO. Although there's are some 
very rare exceptions.

There's nothing wrong with D2. And popularity doing mean 
anything. Improving the current ecosystem and language is what I 
would consider founded. And there's already lots of people using 
D BTW. Part of why I try to do my fair share of D promotion.