How programmers transition between languages

[aberba]

On Friday, 26 January 2018 at 17:24:54 UTC, Benny wrote:
> On Friday, 26 January 2018 at 09:02:03 UTC, Ola Fosheim Grøstad 
> wrote:
>> While this analysis of language popularity on Github is 
>> enlightening:
>>
>> http://www.benfrederickson.com/ranking-programming-languages-by-github-users/
>
> What i found interesting is the comparison between the "newer" 
> languages and D ( see the reddit thread ).

>
> While i can understand Rust ( Mozilla ), Kotlin ( Jetbrain ), 
> Go ( Google ).
> Even Vala and Crystal are ranked higher then D.

Even vala? You have no idea what the guys at elementary.io are 
doing to get more developers to use Vala and GTK for elementary 
OS (Linux) apps. They are developing an IDE in addition to their 
straight forward Granite toolkit for making app development in 
vala much more easier and productive. They've managed to get over 
70 fully-native apps designed for their OS from independent 
developers since second half of last year, when they launched 
their app center.

I don't know how the D Foundation think or know about growing the 
developer community and tools, but I don't see a good job done in 
that aspect. And...elementary makes less money than D Foundation 
(I think, besides, they don't spend money on their community 
growth... just the obvious "non-technical" stuff).

The committee really need to have a modern approach to this 
community and tools thing.

There have been several complaints about tools, and certain 
important stuff missing in the standard library (HTTP/HTTP2, rpc, 
etc) and no 'official' response or some blog post from them about 
it (whether they even care). Several efforts have been 
made...(the std_* stuff in the dub registry)... still nothing 
much. At least input from committee show they care. I feel like 
its always compiler stuff alone.


Or pay someone good at developer community stuff to take charge. 
I said this some 2 yrs ago (my language about "female" won me 
some insults from some people in the forum, remember? It was 
discussed at the conference with the exception of the idea I was 
trying to communicate). I watched the D 2017 Conference and 
nothing about tools and community growth was discussed (except it 
was not "video-ed"). Unless its not important that much.