A summary of D's design principles

[retard]

Fri, 17 Sep 2010 19:31:35 -0700, Jonathan M Davis wrote:

> On Friday 17 September 2010 19:20:20 Nick B wrote:
>> On 18/09/2010 12:28 a.m., Justin Johansson wrote:
>> > On 17/09/2010 6:48 PM, Nick B wrote:
>> >> On 16/09/2010 5:58 a.m., Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
>> >>> A coworker asked me where he could find a brief document of D's
>> >>> design principles. This was after I'd mentioned the "no function
>> >>> hijacking" stance.
>> >> 
>> >> there is no one, true, only to be used, library. D supports
>> >> diversity.
>> > 
>> > Using Walter's words this is a "trite platitude".
>> > 
>> > Comments such as these are akin to saying "D is carbon neutral"
>> > without a supporting argument.
>> > 
>> > Can you please support your argument with more substance, i.e. more
>> > sausage and less sizzle. :-)
>> 
>> Is the fact there are two libraries, and not one, or twenty, a
>> strength, and not a weakness, of the language and the D community.
>> 
>> For example, see this list of (approx 100) C++ libraries:
>> http://www.trumphurst.com/cpplibs1.html#9
>> 
>> I think that this large number of libraries, just leads to
>> fragmentation of effort by the C++ community.
>> 
>> Nick B
> 
> The fact that D has so few libraries is almost certainly temporary (not
> to mention, if you look at dsource, there are quite a few, though most
> of them are essentially dead). Even Java, which has an extensive
> standard library, has all kinds of 3rd party libraries floating around.
> Certainly, C++ suffers in part because its standard library is so
> lacking in functionality, but even if it were fantastic, there would
> still be plenty of C++ libraries floating around. Any language which is
> used by a lot of people will eventually have a lot of libraries unless
> the language itself somehow restricts it (which none do to my
> knowledge).

Some people value the lack of libraries quite high. In fact, if you take 
a brief look at fresh new languages like Rust, there are lots of 
motivated individuals working on the same problems that have already been 
solved in many existing language communities.

Then, take another look at this newsgroup, 10 years ago. Not many of 
those who used to use D back then are here now. Even the Tango developers 
have disappeared. We soon hear about the TDPL statistics. I'm sure a 
manifesto would make the general goals clearer, but the sad fact is that 
D has already lost some previously important key persons because the 
competition is quite intense.