D has become unbearable and it needs to stop

[Joe at bloow.edu]

On Thursday, 8 June 2023 at 13:38:20 UTC, GrimMaple wrote:
> I usually try to stay more silent (on the form at least), but I 
> think I reached my boiling point. I've been a (self employed) 
> full time D developer for almost 2 years now, developing quite 
> a large codebase of personal closed source projects, as well as 
> adopting some 3rdparty code like dlangui. And my life has 
> become particularly miserable in the last half a year or so.
>
> I wish I was exaggerating, but __every__ new DMD version breaks 
> some of my code, to a smaller or bigger extent. It can be 
> either my own code, or dependency code, but I started drowning 
> in deprecation messages or outright breakage. It's nearly 
> impossible to develop any reasonable 3rdparty in those 
> conditions. I'm tired of fixing things that weren't broken. And 
> I can't even imagine having to support multiple branches of 
> code because of those deprecations. But I probably should, as, 
> periodically, I get issues that dlangui can't compile with some 
> outdated dmd version. It's just insane!
>
> Recently, some of the changes resulted in direct API changes. 
> This is unacceptable, as it, basically, forces people to update 
> major versions and split the codebase between "before" and 
> "after". Also forcing them to support two version of the same 
> thing.
>
> There have been a lot of talk about Gripes, about the "Vision" 
> of D... But more than half a year passed, and yet the breakage 
> only gets worse, and nothing seems to be improving. At least in 
> regards of LTS. And with no proper LTS, no proper 3rd-party can 
> exist.
>
> So, as pissed as I am, please, for the love of everything, stop 
> breaking D. I understand the desire to improve the language, 
> but can you understand the desire to just... write working 
> code? Please, make D at least somewhat stable.


To be honest, it is best to leave D. There really is no vision, 
no real organization, and no throughput. D is just coasting on 
fumes. I stopped programming in D and I'm much happier. I only 
use it to maintain a few small utilities I regularly use when I 
want to add a feature or fix a bug but I've moved on. D will not 
last. It's a pipe dream to think D will ever get anywhere. 
Python, a rather idiotic language, has become dominant because of 
AI and it being pushed by major companies. The world doesn't work 
logically and it depends more on $$$ and desire than logic or 
quality.

As more and more people get in to programming(the younger 
generations) languages like python will dominate and languages 
like D will die a cold harsh death. These are just facts. I don't 
make them up, I just report them. D's community failed to realize 
how myopic and insignificant they were. Those still remaining are 
just hanging on to hang on.

D was about 10-20 years behind the curve. Now It's only gotten 
worse since only a massive amount of investment will be able to 
turn D in to anything competitive and sane. It doesn't matter how 
"great" the language is if no one uses it. It will die out. New 
people will come in to "take over" and ruin it as they try to 
turn it in to something else. This discussion has been had for 
nearly a decade and the core team simply does not care and never 
will. For them, it's their golf game and they don't care about 
playing professional, just every other weekend for an hour or so.

With the speed of modern computers and the focus on GPU's and AI 
D really serves no use. It's like learning Latin. Sure it is a 
nice thing to know but it's about useless in the real world. The 
people that "speak Latin" simply do not care and/or have the 
resources to make it main stream. Fewer and fewer people will 
learn it. Over time it will die like any other language. There 
will always be a few people that will be interested in wasting 
their time learning it so they can pretend they have some secret 
talent over others or because they want to understand the 
original text accurately but this is not enough to sustain it 
past a few decades or hundred years. If I'm not mistaken, Latin 
has about 1000 fluent speakers. If you realize that it was once 
the dominant language of the modern world and was the lingua 
franca of Christianity then, well, imagine how D is going to fare.

Save yourself now before you waste more of your life with it. I'm 
speaking from experience. You won't be able to talk sense in to 
the diehards, many have tried. They are deluded or get paid to 
use D by a company that is simply trying to maintain it's 
codebase and has no need to switch. Kids rule the world, they are 
the ones that will spend hours upon hours a day programming 
useless things and pushing things for no reason other than they 
want to. Those drive progress. Age, at some point, ruins almost 
everyone. At some point the effort to grow something is more than 
one can put in. Everything dies, and D's on it's deathbed(this 
does not mean necessarily that D will just vanish completely off 
the face of the earth on day, it means that it is not popular 
enough to sustain growth in any meaningful way and the diehards 
won't do anything change that).