Why is D unpopular?

[Walter Bright]

On 4/30/2022 12:33 PM, Dukc wrote:
> On Saturday, 30 April 2022 at 17:39:04 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:
>> On 4/30/2022 1:32 AM, Paulo Pinto wrote:
>>> Switching gears to ranges, we have Smalltalk-80 collections as one possible 
>>> example,
>>>
>>> https://www.researchgate.net/publication/2409926_Interfaces_and_Specifications_for_the_Smalltalk-80_Collection_Classes 
>>>
>>
>> C++ went the iterator approach. Ranges in C++ occurred only after D did them.
> 
> We're strange. IIRC Bjarne's third C++ book from 1998 already discusses a bit 
> about ranges, albeit calling them "sequences". It shows a few examples how they 
> can work, by pairing iterators into one type, and then goes on to other topics.

There is little choice in C++ but to use a pair of iterators. The next step was 
to put them together into std::pair, but that simply went nowhere in C++ until 
Eric Niebler decided to do something about it.


> Spending any amount of time using Phobos ranges will reveal them as clearly 
> superior to iterators in common usage. One would think that when the idea has 
> been around at least 24 years, ranges would have long since displaced iterators 
> as the recommended standard C++ construct. Yet no.

Iterators had gotten very, very entrenched in C++ by then.


> BTW, As I understand it ranges came to D at around 2008 or 2009. Out of 
> interest, what was D's way of doing the same tasks before that?

D didn't have a metaprogramming way of doing that before.

Ranges based on dynamic arrays were a natural fit for D.