D : Not for me anymore

[Georg Wrede]

BLS wrote:
> That's it.

I know how you feel.

I've been here for the last 5 or 6 years. And _every_single_year_ we've 
actually and honestly believed that _next_ year, that's when D 1.0 comes 
out and we'll take over the world. Yes, really.

On the other hand, only this month Lua got into the top 50 on Tiobe. And 
I've always thought that Lua is a lot more famous than D. !

(Could it simply be their just impressive web presence?)

There are other languages that have stagnated. Take Euphoria as an 
example. It had great promise a few years ago. It could have been all 
that Visual Basic programmers never did even understand to dream about. 
And it has been the motivator for quite a few improvement suggestions in 
this NG throughout the years. (Multiple return values, guarded range 
types, etc.)

Either Rob Craig got a Real Life, or the development simply got bigger 
than a single person could handle. (Oh, holy God of Bits, don't ever let 
that happen to Walter!)

Euphoria has an applications oriented group of regular users (whereas 
the corresponding D crows is more library oriented), an interesting web 
framework including excellent meritocracy handling, and generally a more 
professional and dynamic looking web presence.

And Rob released the entire thing to Open Source a few weeks ago:

> After considering various ways to make a big impact
> on the future of Euphoria for v3.0, including various schemes
> to partially open up the source while still retaining some
> income, I have finally decided to make Euphoria completely
> free of charge, and completely open source.
> 
> This will cost me money, but I can't see the current
> system going on much longer, where a whole programming
> language community is dependent on one guy to add features, 
> fix bugs etc. The amount of code that I have to maintain
> has been steadily growing over the years, and I have to 
> admit that my progress has been slowing.

((http://www.listfilter.com/cgi-bin/esearch.exu?fromMonth=9&fromYear=B&toMonth=9&toYear=B&postedBy=rds&keywords=%22sep+19%22))

Going back to BLS's feelings, maybe D is in the same spot as Euphoria, 
in a couple of years: either release the whole thing to the PD or face 
immediate extinction.

---

To the more positive side: never did I think we'd be on Tiobe as #15 
before 2010! Never did I think we'd ever fare as well as we've done on 
the Language Shoot-Out. Never did I think folks like Alexandriescu would 
pay truckloads of expensive brain-cell-hours for the good of D. And I 
thought it'd be like 5 years from now before we ever get amazing folks 
like Pragma and Don with us. (Of course not forgetting everybody else!)

---

So, D is just getting air under its wings. Right now is a time for a 
discontinuation in D's history. But I do understand the frustration and 
anger -- that maybe a few others too feel as strongly as you do.

One alternative is to just shrug and go away. Then, after (say) 18 
months, one could come an pay us a visit and see if we've gotten 
anywhere in the meantime. This is not actually as stupid an idea as it 
sounds off hand. The 18 months should give one some perspective, and the 
distance from D might let one see the competition and other alternatives 
more clearly and in proportion.