Has D failed? ( unpopular opinion but I think yes )

[Chris]

On Friday, 12 April 2019 at 09:56:48 UTC, Nierjerson wrote:
> On Friday, 12 April 2019 at 07:35:05 UTC, Tofu Kaitlyn wrote:
>
> Yes D has failed if the goal is wide adoption. [...]

Well, what can I say that hasn't been said before (including this 
thread)? Since I said good-bye to D last year my productivity has 
increased incredibly. I read a few days ago that Joakim had left 
the community (he once asked me why my attitude had changed so 
drastically). And you know what, it made me kinda sad. Do things 
like that even register with the D Foundation  and / or 
community? One answer was "this would be an excellent topic for 
this year's GSoC", which is a total and utter lack of respect 
(although I hasten to say that I think the poster wasn't aware of 
this and didn't intend it this way). It has never occurred to the 
D leadership that Android and iOS are more important to 
developers than introducing yet another 
RefFancyTemplateCTFERangeAllocator which is memory safe, but not 
really, but it will be after DIP2001.

Now there is talk of re-writing D, after the umpteenth half baked 
feature was introduced. We'll see, we'll see. IMO, the trouble 
really started when the D Foundation was set up. Instead of 
streamlining and stabilizing D, the whole thing turned into a 
closed shop with a "Hey, we are the lads" kinda attitude, and any 
CS theory or fashion of the day would finally be half baked into 
the language without a second thought. Without paying attention 
to users and the answer to complaints would be "we want to turn D 
into a functional style memory safe [...] language, that's why we 
had to introduce RefFancy, so eff your code!", except it still 
isn't and RefFancy has to be removed or replaced! Who would have 
guessed it would be at loggerheads with FancyRange!?

It's the year 2019 (D is almost 20 years old), a lot of new 
languages have a sounder approach than D, they see what works and 
what doesn't, what programmers need (e.g. ARM) and what they 
don't need. Which is being pragmatic, and being pragmatic is a 
thing that D claims to be. A joke. Programmers need to get sh*t 
done, you know?

And apart from all the fancy feature madness, there's this 
arrogant attitude towards users. To avoid criticism my words were 
twisted in such an obvious and blatant way that it was just 
ridiculous. And what's really funny is that mistakes made by the 
leadership, and the leadership alone, are now being socialized as 
in "the community this, the community that, and this has to 
change!". Ah, give me a break.

The sad thing is that D had it all long before younger languages 
had it, but it preferred to drink all its money in the pub, 
dreaming of fancy features, mañana, mañana...

PS For D zealots: add your favorite insult here, e.g. "entitled 
[...]"