Why is D unpopular?

arco qva6y4sqi at relay.firefox.com
Tue Nov 9 10:32:57 UTC 2021


On Tuesday, 9 November 2021 at 09:54:06 UTC, bachmeier wrote:
> On Tuesday, 9 November 2021 at 08:32:07 UTC, arco wrote:
>
>> Rust also started as a one man show (Graydon Hoare). Mozilla 
>> initially supported it as a research project, not as a large 
>> investment, and its resources are limited anyway compared to 
>> the likes of Google. The comparison holds in my opinion, it's 
>> what came after that made the difference.
>
> This is an interesting interpretation of history. By the end of 
> 2014, the Rust core team had eight members, at least seven of 
> whom were hired by Mozilla to work on getting the language in 
> order for the 1.0 release: 
> https://web.archive.org/web/20141225072631/https://github.com/rust-lang/rust/wiki/Note-core-team
>
> But that understates the funding. They had the Servo team, many 
> of whom used paid hours to work on Rust*, and paid interns.

Yes. That was in 2014. But Hoare started Rust in 2006 as a 
personal project.

Which is my point: in 2006 it was an obscure experiment created 
by one person. In 2014 Mozilla was employing people both to work 
on it and to use it. In 2019 Microsoft & co moved in. In 2021 
Linux developers are considering using it in the kernel.

In other words, instead of dismissing comparisons between Dlang 
and Rust as somehow unfair because Rust has a lot more resources, 
a more interesting question is IMO why and how did Rust attract 
those resources and which lessons can be learnt from it.


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