D is awesome

[Rob T]

On Thursday, 15 November 2012 at 11:07:05 UTC, eskimo wrote:
> Hey guys!
>
> I just wanted to say that D is really really really awesome and 
> I wanted
> to thank everyone contributing to it.
>
> I think what D needs the most at the moment is bug fixing so I 
> am very
> pleased to read the commit messages:
>
> Fixed bug ...
> Fixed bug ...
> Fixed bug ...
> Fixed bug ...
> .....
>
> Coming from many different contributors. Also every bug I 
> stumbled upon
> until now had already been reported before, which means that D 
> has a
> very active and not too small user base already. I like that.
>
> I just wanted to post this, because most of the time people 
> post just
> what not works or about possible improvements. But at least 
> from time to
> time one should lean back and smile on all the stuff people have
> accomplished so far.
>
> So my final words: D is awesome. vibe.d is awesome. Thank you! 
> And of
> course lets work together and make it even better.

I'll ditto what you said. I came across two troublesome bugs 
rather quickly as soon as I started doing some of the more meaty 
D stuff, and that really worried me a lot. But I got same day 
support from members of the D community, and found work-a-rounds 
quickly, and both bugs have been reported as fixed in master only 
a couple of days later.

That kind of activity gives me a warm fuzzy feeling to continue 
my "gamble" to invest in D. In my case, I'm working on a 
real-world app that pays the bills, so I do have a few people who 
are eye-balling my insane decision favoring "experimental" D over 
"tried-and-true" C++. If D delivers, we'll likely not do C++ 
again unless we really REALLY have too.

I do however see some significant hurdles to overcome, such as 
fixing the issues surrounding the GC, which include problems with 
getting dynamic libs and plugins to work correctly. I know 
there's more to the list of significant issues, but these are 
problem areas that I'd like to see get resolved sooner than later.

PS: The ddoc thing using candydoc is f***ing amazing! Just tried 
it yesterday, and I love the idea of embedded documentation. By 
chance, anyone know how to create PDF's?

--rt