Talk on D at DORS/CLUC

[JN]

On Friday, 10 May 2024 at 10:59:37 UTC, RazvanN wrote:
> On Friday, 10 May 2024 at 10:26:31 UTC, Dukc wrote:
>> RazvanN kirjoitti 10.5.2024 klo 11.43:
>> > What do you think that I should focus my talk on?
>>
>> The fact that a language needn't have a built-in GC x-or be 
>> designed for system-level control. No mainstream language does 
>> both but D does.
>>
>> I'm bad at understanding marketing though so don't listen to 
>> me if you feel you know better.
>
> I want to structure my talk in 2 parts:
>
> - one "theoretical" part where I enumerate all the cool stuff D 
> does (this is where I will mention the GC and no-GC part)
> - one practical part where I show snippets of D code which 
> should prompt a "wow" reaction.
>
> I have the first part covered, I'm more interested in the 
> second part if folks have any suggestions.

I think this might have the opposite effects. What would wow 
people in the D community might have the opposite effect on the 
outsiders.

For example, where you see GC and no-GC parts as cool stuff, for 
people outside of D it will look like a confused language with 
multiple identities, next question will be "does it still have 
two standard libraries?".

Similarly templates. Outside of C++/D circles templates are not 
viewed as positively, because of potential slow compilation 
times, breaking autocomplete and infamous template errors 
spanning multiple screens (cough STL cough).

Also, these days I think ecosystem matters more than the language 
itself. Just the fact that D actually has a standard package 
manager/build tool in form of dub is enough to wow some C/C++ 
programmers. Showing that bindings to many popular libraries are 
readily available is also a good thing to show.