Why is D unpopular?

[H. S. Teoh]

On Mon, Nov 08, 2021 at 03:57:30PM +0000, jfondren via Digitalmars-d wrote:
> On Monday, 8 November 2021 at 15:16:07 UTC, H. S. Teoh wrote:
> > I'm honestly surprised anyone would want it any other way! :-D
> > (Being forced to do things one particular way is what drove me
> > *away* from languages like Java.)
> 
> I doubt that people do want it any other way; strictness is seen
> rather as an easy to understand catalyst for what they actually want:
> 
> - for the language to evolve in a predictable direction (and
>   definitely not to add features they don't want, or waste time on
>   features they don't care about)

I can understand this sentiment, but why would I care about features
that I don't want/use?  As long as I'm not forced to use it, I can just
not use those features.  I used to write quite a lot of C++, but I doubt
if I even used 50% of its features.  That didn't stop me from writing
lots of useful C++ code.


> - for the language's future to be more certain

I'm not sure how strictness equates with the future, the latter doesn't
necessarily follow from the former.  But sure, if people want something
concrete to put a finger on...


> - for the language to get more popular

Again, not sure how this follows from strictness, but OK, sure.


> - for robust follow-through on features that are added

Now this is something I could stand behind.  A lot of D features aren't
bad ideas per se, but they only cover a small subset of use cases, and
their interactions with other language features is anybody's guess
(usually this means an ICE). Things like `inout` or `shared` fall in
this category.


> - for there to be an easy argument to get language devs to move
>   quickly to fix a problem (this go bug makes compilation super slow;
>   this rust bug breaks memory safety; this d bug breaks ???).

"This D bug breaks existing code" - that seems to be the biggest bugbear
/ motivator these days. :-D


> There's a lot of arguing for means instead of ends like this when
> language popularity comes up.

I usually don't bother participating in threads about popularity,
because I don't believe in the philosophy that more popular == better,
or that popularity should be a goal at all.  But I responded this time
because it sounded really strange that people would actually prefer less
choice instead of more in a programming language. :-D


T

-- 
For every argument for something, there is always an equal and opposite argument against it. Debates don't give answers, only wounded or inflated egos.