End user experience with D

[Ramon]

Ludovit Lucenic

For the IDE and GDB issues I fully agree. And I'add less than 
comfortable (~"semi automatic"; from what I know) C library 
bindings.

While one may discuss about IDE or cli, I feel that an IDE is at 
least an immensely helpful starting point.
I agree that one should be able to do programming with no more 
than a simple editor, a compiler/linker, and a debugger (!). 
Newcomers, however, (and even many seasoned programmers) handily 
profit from an IDE (and I don't mean Eclipse which I count as a 
moloch that, to make things worse, is based on java).

I also feel that any modern language just *must* have a 
comfortable way to use C libraries.

Finally and possibly most importantly, basically not having fully 
working  debugger support is a very serious lack. I may be wrong 
(actually I hope to be wrong) but from what I know, this issue 
doesn't seem to be seen as having very high priority.

I'm more and more getting the impression that D could be a 
programmers dreams come true if only it were practically and 
productively useable. Sure, it's not D's fault. But in the end we 
need a fully working debugger, some good editor support (say, on 
a Scintilla/Scite level), preferably at least one cross platform 
non-java IDE (like Code:Blocks) and easy access to C libraries in 
order to actually and productively work with a language.

D's bias toward Windows doesn't help either.

Looking at it from a marketing perspective, i.e. looking for what 
potential users (read: "the large crowd out there") would look 
for, I see that the creators of D have done an excellent job 
that, however reminds of a Porsche engine on a makeshift chassis.

Frankly, if we want D to attract developers and to get the 
position it undoubtedly deserves that will not be achieved so 
much by finetuning D or even phobos but by being able to offer a 
well-rounded and well useable package (and soon after good docs 
for what we have so far).

A+ -R