I'd just like to say thanks for D

[Nick Sabalausky]

On Sun, 10 Mar 2013 14:32:42 +0400
Gor Gyolchanyan <gor.f.gyolchanyan at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Sun, Mar 10, 2013 at 11:50 AM, Jonathan M Davis
> <jmdavisProg at gmx.com>wrote:
> 
> > The more I deal with this language, the more I love it, and the more
> > frustrating it is to deal with other languages (much as I like many
> > of them as
> > well). What we have isn't perfect, but overall, it's so clean and
> > powerful that it's an absolute blast to work with. It's so
> > amazingly easy to do so many
> > things in it that are often frustratingly difficult in other
> > languages. Ranges
> > in particular make a huge difference in writing nicely idiomatic and
> > straightforward code, but the language design as a whole is great
> > (much as it
> > still has a few warts - like all languages do).
> >
> > So, I just felt like saying thanks to everyone who's put work into
> > D and continues to do so. Keep up the good work!
> >

///ditto


> In order to survive, one must become necessary for others. In case of
> D, all it takes to become irreplaceable is to have a bunch of
> libraries in D, that have no alternatives in other languages.
> 

That's a very good point. Take a look at the biggest most common
languages out there. For the most part, the merits of the language
itself has rarely been as significant a factor in the language's
adoption as the ability to do something that other languages didn't
offer:

C/C++: The native Unix language.

Obj-C: The native Apple language.

Ruby: Even if you consider the language itself perfect, it still never
would have been on the map were it not for Rails and it's at-the-time
original approach to web apps.

Java: Sandboxing, safety and promises of "write once run anywhere", at a
time when such things were nearly non-existent in the major languages.

bash/sh: How else were you gonna string together CLI commands, usable
on virtually any Unix system?

batch: How else were you gonna string together CLI commands, usable
on virtually any Windows system?

SQL: What other DB query lang you gonna use?

JavaScript: What other language you gonna use for client-side web?

PHP: Server-side web scripting that can run on any super-cheap shared
web host? It's the only option.

C#: It's MS's big push. If you're a Win developer, that alone is a
pretty strong case because MS products can safely be assumed to succeed
by default and only fail if they're really, really bad. An interesting
departure from most software which tends to be the other way around.

Ie, While the merits of the languages themselves DO generally have at
least some relevance, in most cases the really *BIG* factor is
being the only significant choice if you want XXXX lib or platform.
Python is probably about the only one I can think of that might be an
exception to that.