Why is D unpopular?

[Ola Fosheim Grøstad]

On Friday, 6 May 2022 at 12:45:40 UTC, Guillaume Piolat wrote:
> On Friday, 6 May 2022 at 10:40:29 UTC, Ola Fosheim Grøstad 
> wrote:
>>
>> the eco system **disadvantages.**
>
>
> I think that's a meme opinion on these forums.

It is clearly not a meme.

Go is primarily useful for web-services. If you try to do 
something outside that domain you'll get into a rougher landscape.

I don't know anything about what Rust is practical for, but they 
have a significant feature that nobody else has… If I were to 
pick it up I would use it primarily for WebAssembly. Based on 
what little I know, it would probably be difficult to beat for 
that purpose.

C++ is very difficult to beat for things like embedded, 
simulation and computer graphics.

Dart is very difficult to beat for things like cross platform 
mobile.

Faust is very difficult to beat for prototyping LTI signal 
processing.

All these languages have good eco systems (or system libraries) 
for their application areas. To get a reasonable comparison you 
need to focus on one application area and look at what you would 
need to build a full featured application.


> It is unfair because I wrote the DIIDs to showcase D, but I 
> think the D ecosystem stands well the comparison.

It has nothing to do with showcasing individual features or 
libraries, it has to do with picking the right tool for the job. 
Basically nobody are looking for a generic language (outside 
maybe Java and C#).

The question you want to answer is this: does this language 
provide solid, maintained, well-documented libraries at the right 
abstraction level to fill *all the gaps* that needs to be filled 
for this *particular application* I am going to build?