Moving back to .NET

[Laeeth Isharc via Digitalmars-d]

On Tuesday, 29 September 2015 at 16:19:19 UTC, Ola Fosheim 
Grøstad wrote:
> On Tuesday, 29 September 2015 at 15:31:30 UTC, Laeeth Isharc 
> wrote:
>> On Sunday, 27 September 2015 at 09:51:42 UTC, Ola Fosheim 
>> Grøstad wrote:
>>> But even after years of polish Go is still perceived as risky:
>>
>> Of course it's risky.  Yet why do people who are sensible 
>> commercial people who aren't in the business of gambling use 
>> it?  Because it's a very good tool for certain kinds of job, 
>> and the benefits outweight the costs, risks being one of those 
>> costs.
>
> Yet people are looking at creating a derivative language of Go 
> for operating system development:
>
> https://groups.google.com/d/topic/golang-nuts/6dI4vIxRgn8/discussion
>
> Why did they not go with D?

I have no idea - perhaps you should ask them.  I don't see how 
the 'yet' follows, but on the other hand it is not entirely 
unexpected that it doesn't.  People are right to perceive Go as 
risky - anything new is - but that doesn't mean that it's not a 
sound commercial decision to use it.  To this point, you don't 
seem to be inclined to respond.

>> observation.  He wrote _adopting_ and rather than actually 
>> address what he said, you strawmanned it and said _playing 
>> with_.
>>  I hardly need to point out the difference.
>
> Playing with is the starting point for adoption. That is how 
> programming languages gain traction. You start playing with it, 
> then make some small things with it, if it does not disappoint 
> it moves up the chain. C++ didn't start out big, neither did 
> Python or most other languages. This is also how tools are 
> adopted in larger projects. You make small projects (or pilots) 
> first. But if you want to use tools in big projects you 
> actually require external support for it from multiple parties 
> to avoid lock-in and many other factors.

Gates made an interesting point a decade or more back about 
people impatiently overestimating what can be achieved in a 
couple of years and underestimating what can be achieved in a 
decade.  Humans have a bad intuition about the effects of 
compounded growth.  D seems to be growing quite quickly, but some 
people expect things to fall into a rigid stencil for what they 
think should happen when these things don't work like that - life 
unfolds at its own pace.

I hardly think lock-in is a relevant consideration for the 
present context.  I don't know what the threshold for big is 
these days either.


>> But you certainly have made many blanket statements about how 
>> others behave and should behave and it's my belief that you 
>> don't have a proper basis for doing so.
>
> I am describing how best practices affects decision making 
> priorities. This is not "prescriptive", it is "descriptive".

Hume's distinction between is and ought is often misapplied.  But 
one can't get to ought from is, and what you call descriptive may 
reflect a slightly unusual perception of the world and certainly 
some value-judgements.  Nothing wrong with that, so long as one 
recognizes that.

> It does not relate to any particular party, but I certainly 
> defend the viewpoint that long running projects in general 
> better off picking a base that is supported and where the 
> solutions to problems are known in advance.

One can speak in generalities, but perhaps it rather depends on 
what you are trying to accomplish.

>> We know that you think D is a toy language, although you also 
>> say that you aren't calling it a toy language.
>
> That's a rather manipulative assertion.

That's a statement about intent that is based on a poor reading.  
And my statement - whatever you may perceive its intent to be - 
is based purely on what you have said (both that D is a toy 
language - in your view this being an entirely factual assertion 
- and that you are not calling D a toy language).

http://forum.dlang.org/search?q=ola+toy&scope=forum


>> Empirically speaking, some very smart people have built their 
>> business around D.
>
> And so they have around Visual Basic, Php, Javascript and just 
> about any language imaginable.

Indeed, and each of these languages do have their merits, whether 
or not they are your or my cup of tea.  But the particular use 
cases are intriguing since they don't entirely fit with your 
narrative.

>> When you tell people like that that in effect they are idiots, 
>> you ought to have some basis if you wish to be taken seriously.
>
> Another manipulative assertion. I've never said anything about 
> people who adopt D. They have their reasons, and their 
> strategy. I have no interest in forming an opinion about what 
> they do.

It's a constellation of points that doesn't fit with your theory. 
  When I see those, I wonder what I am missing.


>
>> You imply that this is a pattern, when I am not aware of such, 
>> and indeed, as Walter pointed out, a significant shift a few 
>> years back was from people saying "I'm a Java guy at work, but 
>> I use D for side projects" to "Here is how I use D at work".
>
> Walter has in the past been excruciatingly clear on D being a 
> system level programming language and that competing with C# 
> and other similar application level languages would be futile 
> and not within the goals for him.
>
> If that has changed, I'd like to see him spell it out.

Interesting, but doesn't so much relate to your implication that 
C# &c programmers are driven away to which what I wrote was a 
response.  Languages have a life of their own, and intent changes 
as conditions change.  Pinning a label of applications language, 
scripting language, systems language etc seems to be much less 
useful in our age than previously.


>> avoid speaking about the ecosystem.  If Go didn't have nice 
>> networking libraries, its adoption would have been rather 
>> different.  These things are a package deal.
>
> Go is not a system level language as per today.

Indeed not, but we were talking about something different up to 
this point.  (You had said you didn't care about libraries, when 
that clearly makes a difference to the adoption of a language, 
understood as an ecosystem not a spec, and that was the topic at 
hand).


>> It's a big world, and even Andrei and Walter should not 
>> pretend that they understand all the possible ways in which 
>> people might use D and what might be important to them.  (And 
>> they don't).
>
> Actually, they should try to understand this for a defined 
> target group. If not they will not be able to build a solid 
> language that is competitive.

Thank you for your view.


Laeeth.