D popularity

[Rob T]

On Monday, 21 January 2013 at 19:24:10 UTC, H. S. Teoh wrote:
> Yeah, I remember when I was young and foolish, and believed for 
> a short
> moment the hype about "dynamic typing" languages. I quickly 
> discovered
> that dynamic typing is about the worst plague ever to befall the
> programming world as soon as you do anything more than trivial 
> textbook
> examples. You have to be constantly vigilant of what types are 
> being
> passed around in those variables, because they *might* just 
> happen to be
> a string where you expected an int, or an int where you 
> expected an
> object! So much code comes crashing down as soon as you hand it 
> a
> variable of the wrong type -- which the language explicitly 
> allows you
> to, and in fact, which is the language's selling point in the 
> first
> place!

True, however there are legitimate situations where dynamic types 
are essential. Fortunately in D, you can use std.variant or write 
your own improved version which is relatively easy to do in D 
(easier than most static typed languages).

What I see going on in here, is we're being far too quick to bash 
scripted languages without understanding why so many people enjoy 
using them. You can point out all of the problems, but there are 
also plenty of good points.

D can be made to operate with all of the advantages of a scripted 
language, and simultaneously be a compiled language. It almost 
does get it already, it's just missing a few key items, and those 
items won't ever materialize unless we change our attitudes.

--rt