Random points from a D n00b CTO

[Vic via Digitalmars-d]

Hi all,
I'm a CTO at a start up and interested in porting our Java 
project to D. Some points, I have been lurking on D for years, 
went to my first D conf recently. Also I was one of top 20 people 
to join Java Struts, and that grew to 3million plus end users so 
I have some 'cred'. Hope this helps:

- Confusing forum. First listed forum on 'D' is not for D users, 
but it's called D! It is in fact for D commiters. This causes 
frustration for both users and commiters. (yes there is 'learn D' 
but it's 4th down. Commiters forum should be slightly hidden and 
user questions should not be answered in commuters but politely 
asked to post in the proper forum.).

- I was *very* disappointed that using base library locks you 
into GC vs ref. counting.
Separate, I like how Objective C has NSObject for GC purpose(I'd 
love a framework that is just ref counting), but there should be 
dual libs and base should not be GC.

- D is/has become complex. metaprograming, generics, macros, etc. 
This is a culture issue, very hard to fix cultural issues w/o 
losing most commiters. Just a fast system lang w/o headers, 
'boost' and such. All this other stuff can be 3rd party eco 
system and should be pushed out from D proper into 
implementations and add ons.

- Dub rocks.

- Very little 'user' outreach. Meetups such as 'learn D'  (set up 
editor w/ DUB, and write some vibe.d DNS client/server in 4 
lessons). Or how to use a c .so lib.

So hth. FYI I plan to hire 3+ 'D lang' programmers (users, not 
commuters) to rewrite the Java project in Dallas and/or San Jose 
(CA) over the next few months (Feel free to ping me 
@puppetMaster3, ideal candidate is 'prolific' and career 
programmer)

Cheers, Vic