Why is D unpopular?

[Dukc]

On Thursday, 4 November 2021 at 11:10:53 UTC, Ola Fosheim Grøstad 
wrote:
> On Thursday, 4 November 2021 at 10:59:42 UTC, Dukc wrote:
>> Not saying you should agree with it, but you're losing a lot 
>> if you don't consider its arguments.
>
> I have not interest in the topic…
>
> But please understand that in fields such as software process 
> improvement, educational research and design, the most useful 
> ideas are not backed by "hard data".
>
> Most papers on education and design are anecdotal in nature, 
> but that does not mean you should ignore them.

I believe what counts is the strength of the signal, hard data or 
anecdotal. You mentioned software process improvement, so let's 
take an example of an useful idea there: unit testing.

Yeah, I have no hard data on their usefulness, only anecdotal 
experience that dmd/DRuntime/Phobos unit tests regulary prevent 
introducing bugs. The cause and effect are so clear there that I 
definitely believe they help a lot with program reliability, even 
if they aren't worth it for every project.

So yes, an anecdotal forum theory about language adoption can be  
believable in principle. But the average case is nowhere near 
transparent enough to be considered anything more than noise. The 
writer may personally have good reasons to trust his/her theory, 
but at least as likely is that they're just making something up 
because they don't know. It's usually impossible to tell from 
outside.