D forbearance(Official backing of libs)

[tsbockman via Digitalmars-d]

On Saturday, 2 January 2016 at 00:20:37 UTC, Jason Jeffory wrote:
> I think maybe one of the problems with D is that there seems to 
> be no focused backing of official d libs that are required to 
> create apps.
>
> e.g., GUI, Audio, Graphics, etc...
>
> If the D community could decide to officially support(with a 
> distinct web page for such things) such libraries, real 
> progress might be made.
>
> So much work is done on the compiler itself but most of the 
> actually things required to make real world use of the compiler 
> are neglected, It's left up to individuals to do the work and 
> make all the choices.
>
> But there is a different mentality that happens when it's 
> "Official". Others are more willing to support, develop, and 
> use it.
>
> Is this at all possible in the D community?

Making a competitive GUI library is a MASSIVE task. While there 
are some usable options available for D currently, I think the 
most desirable solution is to make a high quality Qt binding.

Various people have looked into doing so in the past, but I think 
they were stalled by D's immature C++ interop. There have been 
great strides forward in this area recently, and work is ongoing. 
I'd bet a Qt binding will be viable within a year or two, if it's 
not already.

As to graphics - it depends on your use case. If you're thinking 
of 3D simulations and games, I was under the impression that the 
D ecosystem already covers the basics (OpenGL, SDL, SFML) fairly 
well.

I'm not sure about audio.

More generally, though - there is a lot of work going into the 
compiler and the standard library because they need it quite 
badly. With basic issues like safe non-GC memory management yet 
unresolved, I don't think it would yet be beneficial to D in the 
long run to shift attention away towards other parts of the 
ecosystem.

The C++ interop, especially, will do far more to expand the D 
ecosystem than the relatively small team working on it could 
possibly accomplish by just writing more D libraries.