[OT] What are D's values?

[H. S. Teoh]

On Wed, Oct 06, 2021 at 11:26:14PM +0000, Tejas via Digitalmars-d wrote:
[...]
> Why do you continue to walk the path less travelled when others enjoy
> the advantages of mainstream languages like better tooling and greater
> stability, ie, fewer/no breaking changes with each release(and
> disadvantages like various janky workarounds for backwards
> compatibility, deigns/ideological constraints, etc)?

Speaking for myself only here:

(1) I have very little concern about walking less travelled paths; IME
popularity does not correlate with quality. Javascript is one of the
most popular languages out there, but from a design perspective it's
trash. No real OO, you fake it with prototypes (or whatever it is they
call 'em), fragile error handling, tons of WATs (== vs ===, weird
implicit conversions between strings, integers, floats, etc.), debugging
is a royal pain.[*]  The only reason JS is still afloat is because its
disproportionate popularity draws in enough manpower to barrel through
problems.  On the contrary, better-designed languages tend to be the
less popular ones.

(2) I have all the tooling I need for efficient work with D (vim +
compiler + Unix shell == yeahhh).  Though I understand I'm in the far
minority on this point. :-D

(3) Breaking changes with each release happens not just with D. I have
some very old C++ projects dating from the 90's, and I can tell you that
trying to get them to compile with a modern compiler is an exercise in
pain.  The only reason people don't complain about this very much is
because D releases much more frequently than C++.  Janky workarounds for
C++ code are pretty much so widely-accepted that you don't even think
twice, you just insert const casts everywhere, insert compiler switches
to suppress errors/warnings, use macro hacks to patch over stuff just
for Mt Cesuaga (Making That Compile Error Shut Up And Go Away), etc..
By comparison, D workarounds are a walk in the park.

(4) Ideological constraints: I find D the most liberating in this
respect, actually. Javascript forces you to fake things like OO with its
weird backwards prototype-based ideology, Java constrains you to
shoehorn the most unlikely things into OO-sanctioned constructs, and
both Java and C# force you to endure a watered-down generics system
because full-on template-style generics are considered "too dangerous"
for the unwashed masses to consume (don't even get me start on Go, which
doesn't even have generics), leading to boilerplate galore; functional
languages force you to rephrase the simplest of imperative constructs in
a functional guise, etc..  With D, I can choose the best paradigm for
the problem at hand without needing to pay lip service to some
ideological ideal that doesn't actually map well to the problem domain.
OO when I need OO, functional when I need functional, bare pointers and
asm for when I need to go under the hood to solder wires together, so to
speak.

Of course, that's not to say D doesn't have its own set of problems. But
in comparison with the other languages I've experienced so far, D has
the least of the problems in exchange for the most of the benefits.


//

([*] Once, I had the misfortune of having a complex, ill-maintained JS
project dumped on my lap at work. Most bugs in that code manifested
themselves in a blank page with no other traces of the problem.  The
browser's debug console was useless because somebody "helpfully"
installed an exception catcher that deliberately swallows errors. Worse
yet, one of our support targets at the time was IE6, which did NOT have
a debug console at all. It was a lot of "fun" debugging problems
specific to IE.  JS is indeed the epitome of a popular language with
better tooling and greater stability.</sarcasm>)


T

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