Andrei's list of barriers to D adoption

[Chris via Digitalmars-d]

On Thursday, 9 June 2016 at 16:44:23 UTC, Yura wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I have to stress I am beginner in programming, mainly 
> interested in number crunching in academia (at least so far). I 
> started to write a small project in D, but had to switch to C 
> for few reasons:
>
> 1) Importance for my CV. I know Python, if I add also C - it 
> sounds, and could be useful since the C language is, apart from 
> the other reasons, is popular and could help me wit the future 
> job, both in academia and industry, since there are many C/C++ 
> projects.

I wouldn't worry too much about the CV. Maybe in a year or two 
companies will demand you know Ruby or Javascript :) Once you 
know who to program it's not so hard to pick up other languages. 
The basic concepts of handling / mapping data are always the same 
(hash tables, arrays ...)

> 2) The libraries - in the scientific world you can find 
> practically everything which has already been coded in C, => 
> many C libraries. To link it to be used within D code requires 
> some work/efforts, and since I am not that confident in my IT 
> skills, I decided that C code calling C libraries is much safer.

It's a piece of cake most of the time, it's really easy.[1] When 
I first tried it, I couldn't believe that it was _that_ simple. I 
use some C code too in one of my projects and it's easy to either 
call individual C functions or, if needs be, you can turn a C 
header file into a D interface file with only a few changes (they 
will almost look identical).

There is absolutely no reason not to use D because of existing C 
libraries. The seamless interfacing to C is one of D's major 
advantages. In this way you can write elegant D code and still 
take advantage of the plethora of C libraries that are available.

Here are examples of porting C libraries that have D interfaces:

https://github.com/D-Programming-Deimos?page=1

If you need help, you can always ask on the forum. Nobody will 
bite you :-)

There are even D frameworks that enable you to interact with 
Python [2] and Lua. I'd say give it a shot.

[1] http://dlang.org/spec/interfaceToC.html
[2] https://github.com/ariovistus/pyd

Other links:

http://dlang.org/ctod.html

http://dlang.org/articles.html


> 3) For C - a lot of tutorials, everything has been explained at 
> stack overflow many times, huge community of people. E.g. you 
> want to use OpenMP, Open MPI - everything is there, explained 
> many times, etc.
>
> 4) The C language is well tested and rock solid stable. 
> However, if you encounter a potential bug in D, I am not sure 
> how long would it take to fix.
>
> 5) Garbage collector - it will slow my number crunching down.

You should test it first, gut feeling is not a proof. If it 
really does slow down your code, write GC free code, as ketmar 
suggested. You can always ask on the .learn forum.

> Please, do not take it as criticism, I like D language, I tried 
> it before C and I find it much much easier, and user friendly. 
> I feel it is more similar to Python. On the other hand C++ is 
> too complex for me, and D would be the perfect option for the 
> scientific community, if the above points would be fixed 
> somehow..
>
> Best luck with your work!