Continuation of `Having "blessed" 3rd party libraries may make D more popular` DIP thread

[WraithGlade]

As indicated by Mike Parker (a D forum moderator) at the end of 
the original [Having "blessed" 3rd party libraries may make D 
more popular and stable for building real 
software.](https://forum.dlang.org/thread/wmjxsrkpvkwwtbhdznff@forum.dlang.org) thread from the D improvement (DIP) subforum, further discussion of the topic is required to placed here in the general subforum instead.

Thus, since I created the original thread, I figured I should 
create the new thread here for anyone who still wished to comment 
on that thread. People might have waited for either me or a 
moderator to recreate the thread otherwise, hence it seemed 
polite to go ahead and make it on behalf of anyone still 
interested in that so as to not leave anyone waiting on it or 
confused about whether they could or should make their own thread 
resurrecting the issue.

So, here you are, for anyone who wants that.

--------

**Tangentially, here's also some side commentary of a more 
personal nature:**

As for myself, I am not sure what the future holds.

I am very tired of drifting from programming language to 
programming language over the years always trying to find a 
reasonable balance of factors (both expressive and native-level 
performance, etc... vs sometimes thinking I'll just disregard 
that and focus on just expressiveness or just project completion 
pragmatism) and D has looked for the past few months like that 
language but I have become much less sure of that in light of 
some of the things mentioned in the original thread.

Even if the precipitous drop in contributions to D is isolated to 
the Phobos standard library, there still seem to be reasons to be 
wary. In particular, it still remains unclear whether the 
language and library ecosystem is a stable base to build upon for 
real software, which remains the central concern.

I don't even know if the dependencies of many third party 
libraries are even in a form that can actually be shipped. It is 
hard to anticipate that in advance, so "jumping at shadows" or 
going by "feel" or "smell" (such as extrapolating based on 
whether a library's process seems easy and polished and well 
documented or not) seems like the strategy I have had to employ 
in making such estimates. There are many unknowns and there's no 
way of knowing in advance what will be genuinely usable and 
shippable in practice or not, since anything could have a hidden 
pragmatically unfixable problem lurking in it for all I know.

Credit where credit is due: doubtlessly D has had lots of 
wonderful work put into it and is very worthy of admiration and 
wider use. I want/wanted to believe in it and intended to build 
out my own tools for both a game dev idea and an art software 
tool idea in it (plus miscellaneous personal scripting and 
utility use), and perhaps even a simple reusable open source GUI 
engine or a community book eventually if all went especially 
well, but I am not sure what to think anymore in that regard.

Honestly, taking an even more personal note:

**Being a "programming language dilettante" is sort of ruining my 
life.** The cycle of indecision I've been trapped in for many 
many years has become a destructive pattern that has done more to 
harm me than almost anything else in my life.

I have squandered practically the entire past decade just running 
in circles switching between different programming languages and 
reading countless programming language tutorials and books and 
messing around in them in aimless ways and basically hardly 
creating anything real or substantive. That's not the life I 
wanted for myself, nor is it even a responsible way of living for 
me at this point given how much time I've lost doing that.

Yet, my personality is apparently so tightly wound that even 
though I have repeatedly told myself in my own mind and in 
countless vigorous notes to myself that the final outcome for end 
users is what really matters I still continue to be trapped in 
the cycle of indecision and hypervigilance directed at ensuring 
that my time is not wasted especially given how much time I've 
already wasted this way.

I feel like I am still waiting for my life as a programmer to 
begin, but instead have just been spinning in circles ad 
infinitum while a large part of my lifespan just has slipped away 
without actually doing any of the things I've intended to do and 
planned to do for my whole life in regards to software and such. 
I feel like I'm treading water and making no progress and even 
slipping backwards regarding some skills and knowledge from 
disuse.

I don't know what to do honestly.

I wish I could turn back the clock to when working in *any* 
programming language or system was pure joy and wonder and not 
just some *amorphous sense of looming liability and risk*, but 
here I am anyway, wishing for years that I could break that cycle 
of stagnation.

Do you know what I mean? Anyone else here been through the same 
struggle as a programmer?

To make matters even worse, this is no mere diversion for me. I'm 
not a hobbyist. I used to work in the AAA game industry briefly 
but I resigned from that many years ago thinking I'd easily make 
my own software and games but instead have been trapped in 
bizarre self-defeating seemingly perpetual indecision for years 
doing practically nothing real.

I did other things along the way such as working part-time to 
make ends meet of course and also wrote a couple books, but I 
seriously need to actually make income from what I program, yet 
instead I just can't seem to settle on a foundation that feels 
right and stable enough. That is my overbearing perfectionism in 
part, surely, but also other kinds of unease mixed in there.

Perhaps other members of the D programming forum (or even just of 
the whole programming community, independent of language) have 
also struggled with similar issues here.

What are your thoughts on how to deal with that as individuals 
and/or as a community?

Who else has struggled in these regards? Has anyone here overcome 
such self-defeating behavior successfully before?

What paths seem wise to take for those seeking better outcomes?

I know some of that is personal, but I have a feeling programmers 
of less known languages like here are fairly likely to find this 
relatable and so perhaps that is a good additional tangent to 
explore relative to the old thread, if people feel like it. Just 
throwing that out there as an option.

Anyway, I hope the best for everyone for our future, myself 
included.

I'm tired of the churn and feeling of always risking building on 
quicksand. I want what I make to last. I've got to find an 
effective path forward somehow, whatever it is. I'm not sure what 
that's going to be at this point though. Today has definitely 
been a big letdown for me, but that also isn't outside the norm 
for my pattern of unease and switching languages and approaches 
faster than I can get anything meaningful done for years on end...

Why I'm like that despite intending so very strongly to be 
otherwise and even knowing consciously that I am putting too much 
emphasis on language and tool ideology and not enough on just 
getting real outcomes created continues to elude me.

Regardless though, I bid you all a good night. Sleep well and 
thanks for reading.