On Monday, 16 March 2015 at 08:07:26 UTC, ninja wrote:
On Monday, 16 March 2015 at 01:22:47 UTC, cym13 wrote:
If stories are wanted, I might as well tell mine.
I am an attorney and a typical "programming-language-user": I
love to code my own utilities for the job (document-creation,
bookkeeping, etc.), but I use Windows and have an android smart
phone. In the last 15 years, I tried C (which I still use for
specific tasks), C++, C#, Pascal, Java, Perl, Ruby, Lua and D
now. I avoided Python and PHP because a good roofer listens to
his heart, not his wallet* :) My experiences so far:
1. D has to worst docs I happened to meet. I am still having
difficulties figuring out functions like 'any' and 'all', while
I
understood the Ruby Enumerables at the first time. Same goes to
string manipulation. Last time I used std.zip I had to read it's
source to make my code work. That's a big warning sign.
2. Please stop changing the (core) language all the time. There
are like 3 new proposals every week in the forums and at least 2
of those are seriously considered. Please, just stop.
3. Improve Windows support. Include
http://www.dsource.org/projects/bindings/wiki/WindowsApi. The
fact that D needs Visual Studio for 64bit apps in 2015 is a
shame.
4. D needs some kind of default GUI toolkit. I can't give my
utilities to associates/friends because no one wants to use a
console any more. I know it is not a small feat, but look at
Ruby
- they just bundle the last version of Tk with their installer
and maintain a thin wrapper. Tk can be love/hated (I actually
like its flat and winnative theme) but it enables out-of-the-box
platform independent desktop-developement for Ruby.
* sorry for the ancient Star Wars/Clerks reference
Smart phones seem to have an under allocation of attention to
them in the D community given the stakes. If I had the free
cashflow I would pay for someone to work on that full time for a
bit, but that's not practicable for the time being.
Interesting to hear about your experience using D for your work.
Would you be willing to write a little more about it and share
your experience in a way that could be added to a collection of
user stories?
For the GUI, have you considered creating a local web front end ?
Less work than a pure GUI, but people are used to using a
browser.
