D is dead (was: Dicebot on leaving D: It is anarchy driven development in all its glory.)

[Eugene Wissner]

On Thursday, 23 August 2018 at 03:50:44 UTC, Shachar Shemesh 
wrote:
> No, no and no.
>
> I was holding out on replying to this thread to see how the 
> community would react. The vibe I'm getting, however, is that 
> the people who are seeing D's problems have given up on 
> affecting change.
>
> It is no secret that when I joined Weka, I was a sole D 
> detractor among a company quite enamored with the language. I 
> used to have quite heated water cooler debates about that point 
> of view.
>
> Every single one of the people rushing to defend D at the time 
> has since come around. There is still some debate on whether, 
> points vs. counter points, choosing D was a good idea, but the 
> overwhelming consensus inside Weka today is that D has *fatal* 
> flaws and no path to fixing them.
>
> And by "fatal", I mean literally flaws that are likely to 
> literally kill the language.
>
> And the thing that brought them around is not my power of 
> persuasion. The thing that brought them around was spending a 
> couple of years working with the language on an every-day basis.
>
> And you will notice this in the way Weka employees talk on this 
> forum: except me, they all disappeared. You used to see Idan, 
> Tomer and Eyal post here. Where are they?
>
> This forum is hostile to criticism, and generally tries to keep 
> everyone using D the same way. If you're cutting edge D, the 
> forum is almost no help at all. Consensus among former posters 
> here is that it is generally a waste of time, so almost 
> everyone left, and those who didn't, stopped posting.
>
> And it's not just Weka. I've had a chance to talk in private to 
> some other developers. Quite a lot have serious, fundamental 
> issues with the language. You will notice none of them speaks 
> up on this thread.
>
> They don't see the point.
>
> No technical project is born great. If you want a technical 
> project to be great, the people working on it have to focus on 
> its *flaws*. The D's community just doesn't do that.
>
> To sum it up: fatal flaws + no path to fixing + no push from 
> the community = inevitable eventual death.
>
> With great regrets,
> Shachar

"anarchy driven development" is a pearl. It is also mood driven 
development. Yesterday was scope and -dip1000 super important, 
today is betterC very hot and everyone works on betterC druntime, 
betterC Phobos, betterC libraries. Maybe -dip1000 will be made 
default at some point and the language will get another one 
well-intentioned but only half-working feature. And I'm beginning 
to doubt that the real problem is that the community doesn't help.

Don't get me wrong, I do development in absolutely the same, 
anarchy driven :), way. Sometimes I can't work long enough at the 
same thing, sometimes I lose interest. It is also great for 
research and trying out new ideas since D tries to be innovative 
and offer a better developer experience. And I can also 
understand that the language authors want to control the 
evolution of the language and try make it better testing new 
ideas.

But this kind of development doesn't work anymore that well for 
commercial customers that aren't (only) interested in research. 
 From this perspective D becomes over-complicated, half-finished 
language. And nobody can tell what will be "in" tomorrow.