My choice to pick Go over D ( and Rust ), mostly non-technical

[Joakim]

On Saturday, 3 February 2018 at 01:52:04 UTC, psychoticRabbit 
wrote:
> On Friday, 2 February 2018 at 15:06:35 UTC, Benny wrote:
>>
>> I am personally confused with D's message.
>
> I think that point hits the cause of your problem with D (along 
> with your need to 'choose' something over 'something' else).
>
> Stop looking for the meaning of D .. and start experiencing it.
> (there is no meaning...to anything!)
>
> Stop comparing D to other things, and just enjoy what it has to 
> offer.
> (tribalism not cool!)
>
> And btw. one persons technical justification for using x, is 
> another persons technical justification for not using x.
>
> Plenty of experienced programmers  (who never used D before) 
> now enjoy using D, even if they still have to program in other 
> languages...in order to earn a living.
>
> Too many corporations have big investments in other languages. 
> Don't expect D to compete here anytime soon. That is the nature 
> of business. If D is to take off anywhere, it will be in the 
> open source community, and startups - not a google or facebook, 
> and certainly never microsoft.
>
> D has a lot of good and interesting things to offer to the 
> world of software development, including an amazing, reasonably 
> efficient standard library (with support from the compiler). It 
> also supports all major platforms that matter (although it's 
> hard to argue that windows 32bit 'matters' ;-). And there is no 
> corporate backer making this all happen. It's just people who 
> want to build something great, and give up their time to do it.
>
> D has the benefit of having a compiler expert, and an algorithm 
> expert in the core team. The advantage from this cannot be 
> underestimated (which is why many are willing to look the other 
> way when it comes to lack of significant management skills ;-)
>   ..and I'd rather it that way, than the other way (i.e great 
> managers, who don't understand a thing). Both would be nice.. 
> but who has that?

Probably the best response to what he wrote and to similar 
sentiments expressed by others over the years, but I'll add one 
caveat: it has been mentioned here that D has been used a little 
by a few teams at both Facebook and Microsoft, dunno about 
Google.  Though as you said, no sign that they'll embrace it much 
more, and probably better to have it adopted at many more smaller 
places.

> But D is on a road trip...it's not at its destination (I'm not 
> sure it even knows - or cares - where its going ;-)
>
> Just enjoy the road trip! Or jump out. It's entirely your 
> choice.
>
> But the road trip will continue, and those on it, will keep 
> enjoying new sights...

According to Linus, it is impossible to know your destination if 
your scope is wide enough, such as a general-purpose programming 
language or an OS kernel, as this is what he said in response to 
a question about whether linux could still be designed at the 
scale it reached 16 years ago:

"I will go further and claim that _no_ major software project 
that has
been successful in a general marketplace (as opposed to niches) 
has ever
gone through those nice lifecycles they tell you about in CompSci 
classes.
Have you _ever_ heard of a project that actually started off with 
trying
to figure out what it should do, a rigorous design phase, and a
implementation phase?

Dream on.

Software evolves. It isn't designed. The only question is how 
strictly you
_control_ the evolution, and how open you are to external sources 
of
mutations.

And too much control of the evolution will kill you. Inevitably, 
and
without fail. Always. In biology, and in software.

Amen."
http://yarchive.net/comp/evolution.html