On 30 December 2014 at 04:08, Gary Willoughby via Digitalmars-d <digitalmars-d@puremagic.com> wrote: > On Monday, 29 December 2014 at 16:33:05 UTC, Joakim wrote: >> >> I don't think it needs to be a zero-sum game. Removing blockers to entry >> can make an orders-of-magnitude difference in the number of users for a >> particular platform, and when you gain users, you gain developers. Paying >> now to remove basic usability issues could well free up a lot of core >> contributor time in future, by opening a door for Windows devs that makes it >> worth their while to invest effort into the language and its toolchain. > > > Yes, this is how i see things.
I think this is the most important point I (tried) to make; users are only likely to contribute once they already have _significant_ investment. First-impressions matter, a lot, and it has been my experience that many (most?) users I have introduced to D (mainly from my own industry) have been scared off by first-impressions, relating to the points I've discussed. Business commitment is even more significant than user commitment, since if a business becomes committed and there is a block in the way, something that needs to be fixed and nobody else is available to do it, there is a heightened probability they will assign someone paid working time to address the issue. Support for existing commitments is not usually negotiable. As such, I think commercial users are quite important, and perhaps even in the traditional open-source sense that it may actually lead to things being done. Of course, businesses are more conservative than users, and will never make a company commitment if the experience appears shaky right out of the gate. Those first(/early) impressions really matter!
