Civility

[Don Allen]

I've been bothered by the tone of some of the messages in this 
forum recently, particularly in the "Why isn't D more popular?" 
threads.

Certainly D, like every other language, isn't perfect. I think it 
is fine to make suggestions about how it could be improved. I've 
done it myself recently. But given the extraordinary amount of 
hard work and skill that has gone into producing the software as 
it is today, combined with the fact that D is given to us without 
cost, reinforces our obligation to conduct these discussions in a 
civil manner.

I readily concede that I am a newcomer to the D community and I 
sense that there may be some scar tissue from a past with which I 
am not familiar. But what I see is a language and supporting 
documentation, tools and libraries that, however imperfect (join 
the crowd!), are awfully good in my estimation. I recently 
finished porting about 10,000 lines of C to D that, despite my 
best efforts and long experience had become impossibly ugly and 
hard to maintain. As someone recently observed in this forum, the 
D code is far more readable and concise and the performance and 
reliability (so far) are excellent. And the port was easy, mostly 
taking the existing C and simplifying it, by taking advantage of 
D's greater power.

So while I encourage all of you to submit your best ideas for D 
improvement to this forum, I also suggest that you avoid getting 
nasty or personal.

I'd also like to take a moment to address the "why isn't D more 
popular" question. Popularity is not necessarily an indication of 
merit. Windows still occupies something like 90% of the 
desktops/laptops and while it has improved since Ballmer's exit, 
I think it is a distant last among the operating systems 
available for desktop computers and laptops. A lot of factors 
contribute to popularity and I don't think they add up to a 
meritocracy. As a lifelong amateur classical musician, this 
reminds me of the music business, where extraordinary musicians 
too frequently get overlooked by an unknowing public that is 
easily seduced by extra-musical factors.