Daily downloads in decline

[Bruno Medeiros via Digitalmars-d]

On 05/06/2015 20:09, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
> On 6/5/15 12:02 PM, Bruno Medeiros wrote:
>> The traction and support that Rust gained, even before 1.0, showed that
>> having your primary toolchain based on GCC or LLVM is the only
>> sustainable way forward
>
> Well I'm wondering how that inference works. -- Andrei

Indeed I wasn't clear on that reasoning. It's not the traction that Rust 
gained that is the *cause* for LLVM "being the only sustainable way 
forward". Rather, it's simply what showed me that this was the case. Let 
me be more clear.

First when I said "traction and support", I wasn't referring to the Rust 
user base, but rather the number of *paid* developers[1] that Mozilla 
has working on the Rust project. Besides the core team, they also seem 
to be willing to also hire programmers on a contract basis to work one 
certain aspects of the toolchain (see for example: 
https://michaelwoerister.github.io/2014/02/28/mozilla-contract.html).

But more importantly: when I finally started looking into Rust, was also 
what caused me to look into LLVM properly, particularly by subscribing 
the LLVM weekly newsletter. And that's when I gradually realized all the 
work LLVM having done, with so many people working on it.

The recent news that Microsoft is going to work on a LLVM based compiler
(http://developers.slashdot.org/story/15/04/14/1529210/microsoft-starts-working-on-an-llvm-based-compiler-for-net), 
is another sign of this tidal wave we are seeing in the horizon: the 
future for non-proprietary languages is to be based on LLVM or GCC, or 
they won't be able to compete.

And toolchain always wins. If won't matter if the language is superior.


[1]: Note the point here isn't that paid developers are better than 
volunteer ones, the point they will usually will have more time to work 
on things than volunteer. The point is about the time and effort they 
are able to dedicate, not that they are paid per se.

-- 
Bruno Medeiros
https://twitter.com/brunodomedeiros