2015 H1 Vision

[Joakim via Digitalmars-d-announce]

On Monday, 2 February 2015 at 01:43:02 UTC, Jerry Morrison wrote:
> On Monday, 2 February 2015 at 00:58:53 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu 
> wrote:
>> On 2/1/15 3:52 PM, Jerry Morrison wrote:
>>> The other big thing missing from the Vision doc is picking a 
>>> niche,
>>
>> That may as well come later - or not at all. We don't think it 
>> is now time to commit to a particular niche.
>
> OK. Just keep in mind that if you want to “cross the chasm” 
> from visionaries to pragmatics, it requires meeting 100% of the 
> needs of at least one niche (whether that's real-time, 
> bare-metal, desktop apps, web servers, data analysis, mobile 
> apps, or whatever).
>
> It does no good to meet 90% of the needs of many niches.
>
> https://blogs.saphana.com/2013/02/04/the-end-of-the-beginning-sap-hana-has-crossed-the-chasm/

What was the niche C++ aimed for a couple decades back, C with 
objects?  D is aiming for the same "niche" as C and C++, a 
general-purpose, native-compiled language that allows you to 
extract almost-maximal performance while still being relatively 
easy to use, at least compared to the alternatives.

Perhaps focusing on a smaller niche first would allow D to gain a 
larger following quicker, but that might box it in from becoming 
more general-purpose later, as early decisions optimize for that 
niche and might be tough to undo.  Go certainly seems stuck in a 
niche now, though I'm not sure how much of that is because they 
just don't want to add more general-purpose features like 
generics, ie they're happy in their niche.

C and C++ are very general-purpose, but they can still be 
considered as a "niche" of performance languages.  What's wrong 
with D aiming for that "niche?"