D is on his way to Top 20 in Tiobe

[Ola Fosheim Grøstad via Digitalmars-d]

On Saturday, 12 December 2015 at 16:14:34 UTC, JohnCK wrote:
> Sure, I congratulate too, but what I've said is that I think 
> that maybe D lost it's momentum among other languages back 
> then, in fact I think C++ community was aware of this too, and 
> then they started doing all this conferences and being a bit 
> more open-minded, and now there are what I would say "big" 
> competitors like: Go and Rust.

Depends on what is meant by momentum, if we mean growth among 
enthusiasts then I think the above graphs document that D has 
been on a plateau since early 2013.

I'm thinking that maybe the @nogc and gc-free focus gained more 
enthusiasts among the existing D users and perhaps could explain 
the jump in enthusiasm, but no growth over time.

I think Go has experienced both great gains and then significant 
losses, but I don't think Go affects D much. Rust was also not so 
attractive in 2013, so it cannot explain the plateau.

What might explain that there is neither growth or decline is 
language complexity. Swift seems to have a strong focus on making 
the language simpler where they can.

A language like Crystal is also very easy to get into for people 
who know Ruby and want a faster option. Same with Nim and Python 
perhaps. These have seen some growth right now, despite many 
alternatives.

I think Jonathan Blow's focus on "friction" makes a lot of sense. 
When you have options, you go for the options with less friction. 
D has many of downloads, and has more active marketing than Nim 
and Crystal, but it does not produce more enthusiasts.

So apparently newbies hit roadbumps that make the transition 
newbie -> enthusiast difficult. To get past that you most likely 
need a language/eco system with less complexity.