Using D

[Joakim via Digitalmars-d]

On Saturday, 12 July 2014 at 10:27:12 UTC, Russel Winder via 
Digitalmars-d wrote:
> In the end it is about community rather than the programming 
> language
> per se. Java created a huge community that was evangelical. Go 
> has
> rapidly created an active community that is evangelical. Python 
> has
> rapidly created a large evangelical community. D has slowly 
> created a
> small community that hasn't as yet created the outward looking
> evangelical aspect. Where are the user groups having local 
> meetings is
> my main metric. Java definitely, Go definitely, C++ sort of, D 
> no. This
> is the real problem for D I feel. Without local user groups 
> meeting up
> you don't get exposure and you don't get traction in the market.

This seems like an outdated way of looking at things.  I've never 
attended a user group in my life, yet I've picked up several 
technologies since I left college a while back.  When I found out 
that such user groups existed, I thought they were kind of 
quaint, a remnant of pre-internet times.

As for an evangelical community, did C and C++ have those?  I 
don't think anyone was ever really evangelical about Obj-C as it 
took off over the last couple years, riding on the coattails of 
the meteoric rise of iOS.  Evangelism can help, but it can be 
more a sign of the evangelist's enthusiasm than a tech worth 
using.  Maybe D isn't ready for evangelism yet, there's something 
to be said for getting the product in gear before advertising it.

Not saying there's anything wrong with DUGs, higher bandwidth 
interaction and all, but the current approach of D developers 
giving talks at outside gatherings or putting DConf talks online 
seems like a much better way to spread the gospel to me.  
Certainly both can be done, I just wouldn't use DUGs as the main 
metric.

I've said it a couple times before, but it bears repeating: what 
D needs is a killer app.  Rails showed the ease of use of ruby.  
iOS made Obj-C a star.  D needs to show its utility by spawning a 
similar killer app, that's what will prove its worth in the 
market.  We can't know what that will be, but if D is any good, 
it will probably happen at some point.