Civility

[Chris]

On Friday, 24 June 2022 at 02:48:32 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:
> Thanks for your kind words, Don! And thanks for recounting your 
> success story with converting C to D.
>
> Frankly, it has a lot to do with marketing. We're all engineers 
> here, not marketers, and it shows.

This begs the question why no marketer ever approached the D 
community to embrace the product. If a clever marketer sees 
potential s/he will certainly have a go at it. Have you ever been 
approached by marketer about D?

> Since you brought up the music business, it's the same thing. 
> It's only partially a meritocracy. The rest is skill at 
> marketing, packaging, and promotion. Even The Beatles 
> languished in obscurity until they met Epstein.

This is sadly true, isn't it weird that so many famous female 
classical musicians have the perfect looks for fashion magazines? 
That's statistically not possible. Image over talent, that also 
happens in other genres like Blues, Rock and Jazz.

> My own C compiler did poorly until I partnered with John 
> Haggins, a born marketer. Wow, what a difference he made!
>
> I've known many engineers over the years who created very nice 
> products. They'd come and complain to me that there was no 
> uptake, what should they do? I replied that they needed 
> marketing and promotion, and I'd outline things they needed to 
> do (like write articles, give presentations at conferences, 
> etc.).
>
> None of them would do this. Several had the attitude that it 
> was unethical to do any marketing and promotion. The rest just 
> didn't want to make the effort. All wound up very discouraged 
> and bitter.
>

You sure can't blame the lack of marketing for D's relative 
obscurity. What about all the initially enthusiastic users who 
abandoned D for technical reasons not because of the lack of 
marketing? Other small open source languages attract users and 
contributors without much hype too. In D's case it's not just the 
marketing. It's the many unresolved issues the language has (I 
won't reiterate them here). Harsh criticism of D usually comes 
from users who are / were really interested in D, not from the 
random developer who has to churn out silly apps for smart 
phones. The usual steps after discovering D are roughly like 
this: enthusiasm > start a project in D > experience / 
proficiency > slowly discover all the flaws > despair >  no 
remedy in sight > good-bye. Of course, each Reddit thread or 
whatever attracts the criticism of ex-users and / or long-time 
observers.

As for the hairshirt business, it does not help to rephrase 
things in a positive way. That's called framing and is usually a 
sign of decay. Once we're asked to use politically correct 
language, we know that there are issues we're not allowed to talk 
about. That won't make the issues go away though.