A Few thoughts on C, C++, and D

[Ola Fosheim Grostad via Digitalmars-d]

On Tuesday, 30 May 2017 at 01:46:02 UTC, bachmeier wrote:
> I'm not necessarily disagreeing with RW's post. My reading is 
> that the goal would be to get D into the enterprise, but maybe 
> I misinterpreted. If D as a successor to Vala leads to more 
> projects like Tilix, that's great.

I never quite understood the enterprise-focus either. What I like 
to see for a language is a difficult use scenario being 
maintainable. I sometimes browse large code bases just to see if 
a language leads to readable code.

> writing better documentation for Dub, and so on. Incremental 
> improvements lead to incremental adoption of D.

Yes, I think retention is the most important factor in the case 
of D. Identify and understand why polyglot programmers either 
stay with D or leave. Then give those areas the highest priority, 
especially exit-triggering issues.

Focusing on getting many libraries won't work, because you need 
to maintain them. I never use unmaintained libraries... Having 
many unmaintained libraries is in a way worse than having a few 
long-running ones that improve at a steady pace.

> I'll also note that Vala didn't catch on, so being the 
> successor to Vala by itself may not help D adoption.

Being perceived as the best for something helps. Vala was the 
best for something narrow. I think Rust is being perceived as the 
best for runtime-less programming with high level features (right 
or wrong) and Go is perceived as having a runtime for web 
services.

So I personally perceive Rust and Go in different sectors of the 
spectrum. I have more problems placing Nim, Haxe, D etc.