Where will D sit in the web service space?

[via Digitalmars-d]

On Saturday, 18 July 2015 at 10:29:20 UTC, Laeeth Isharc wrote:
> accurate understanding of reality to do so.  The propensity to 
> put things on github and for people to ask questions on 
> stackoverflow varies according to the problem domain.

StackOverflow has become the de-facto documentation resource for 
software engineers. It saves me insane amounts of time, many 
other programmers say the same thing. Google has been known to 
shut down it's own support-forums in order to get higher activity 
on StackOverflow.

You cannot gloss over the importance of this.

>> Large scale batch-processing cannot drive adoption. 
>> Specialized solutions like Chapel and C++/extensions will take 
>> the batch-throughput market.
>
> I didn't say anything about batch processing.  It's also very 
> intriguing to see you believe you know my problem domain better 
> than me.

I have no interest in your problem domain, but you say that 
throughput is important for you.

I see basically 4 reasons to use languages like C++/D/Rust:

1. Low level hardware/OS access
2. Throughput
3. Lowered memory usage
4. Detailed control over execution patterns.

>> In the 80s lots of software was close to theoretical 
>> throughput. Today, almost no software is anywhere close, 
>> because it is waaaay too expensive in terms of developer time 
>> as code base sizes increase.
>
> We are speaking of shifts at the margin from where we start 
> today, and about the future, not historical trends over the 
> past decade or two.

The trend in consumer hardware is that GPUs share memory with the 
CPU or have fast paths. So efficiency means GPGPU programming, 
Metal, Vulkan..

The trend is that those few that can pay for throughput moves 
towards FPGA and other specialized solutions where it matters.

The trend in performant server-hardware is that CPUs have local 
memory.

The historical trend is that those expensive solutions become 
commoditized in one way or another over time. Meaning, consumer 
hardware adopt some features from high-end specialized hardware 
over time.