Why didn't Micro Soft take D as their new language?

[Laeeth Isharc]

On Sunday, 7 June 2020 at 21:42:12 UTC, Jason wrote:
> On Sunday, 7 June 2020 at 21:32:49 UTC, IGotD- wrote:
>> On Sunday, 7 June 2020 at 20:46:36 UTC, Vinod K Chandran wrote:
>>> Why didn't Micro Soft take D as their new language? If they 
>>> wanted a better C, D would have been better than Rust.
>>
>> Because Microsoft copies technologies and makes an in house 
>> version of it. Microsoft did it with Java and called it J++. I 
>> expect that Microsoft will come with a Rust clone soon, we 
>> know that they have already started working on that.
>>
>> Why didn't they clone D? Maybe it was too close to C++ and C#, 
>> the extra work wasn't worth it. Maybe D was too fringe for 
>> Microsoft to care.
>
> It seems every company would rather create a new language 
> instead of adopting one. That's one reason why D will never be 
> "chosen" by an organization. Instead, once the major 
> contributors either retire or lose interest, D will finally die 
> instead of linger in its current comatose state.
>
> RIP

In 1958 the average lifespan of a company listed on the S&P 500 
was 61 years.  In 2016 it was less than 18 years.  McKinsey 
believed then that by 2027 75% of companies listed at that time 
will have disappeared.

https://www.imd.org/research-knowledge/articles/why-you-will-probably-live-longer-than-most-big-companies/

What happens to a language that is dominated by the sponsorship 
of a single company if the company disappears?  It is possible 
for it to survive, but it's going to be quite disruptive if the 
company support disappears over quite a short period of time.

Google, for example, has a big cash pile.  But it's core business 
is advertising and according to eBay personalised adverts cost 
10x more, but are only 30% more effective.  What do you suppose 
is going to happen to advertising spend over the next twenty 
years should people become less materialistic, have less 
disposable income and decide that maybe their core product isn't 
worth what they currently do ?  Let's not discuss the appeal of 
such a company to the most talented engineers and how that might 
change.

A language that is vital without large cash infusions from a 
single sponsor is really much more able to survive adverse 
conditions.  It's also better from that point of view if the 
companies that do use it are spread across a range of domains and 
stages of the process of production.

D does have plenty of corporate users:
https://dlang.org/orgs-using-d.html

We are one of them, and I am aiming to hire 20 people to write D 
over the next year or two.



Laeeth