On Friday, 25 September 2015 at 16:15:45 UTC, Laeeth Isharc wrote:
On Friday, 25 September 2015 at 13:54:40 UTC, Chris wrote:
Having followed this forum for 2 or 3 years now, I doubt
whether an IDE would attract people at this stage. If we had a
full-fledged IDE, there would be other concerns (or excuses).
D scares people away. It's too raw, too bare bones, everything
is still moving like hot lava, and maybe people are
intimidated by it, because they feel they might be considered
bad programmers, if they don't know the ins and outs of it.
This is very insightful, and I think goes to the heart of
things.
(Based on what I have observed, and my experience with working
with someone who had exactly this feeling).
I think there's a good bit of fear involved. I've seen this kind
of behavior with other things, not just D. Nothing ever suits
people, nothing will do. It's an excuse based on latent fear.
I don't think it's true these days that programmers who depend
on an IDE and on a visual debugger are mediocre programmers[*],
but definitely mediocre programmers are scared of the command
line, and it is in the nature of things that there are more
mediocre programmers than not, if you have a generous
definition of programmer. And then because there are more of
them and we live in a democratic age that also shapes the
culture to a certain extent.
Never would I call someone a mediocre programmer _because_ s/he
uses an IDE. Neither do I think that I'm the cream of the crop,
because I use D. But an IDE is not everything, actually it's the
last bit you build, once the language is working. But these days
it's the other way around, people think IDE means that a given
language is good. It's just easier to use.
Do you think it's true that there is no end to D, as far as the
language itself goes? I mean there is no end to C in terms of
learning about programming, but that's a different point. I
never even really wrote object-oriented code before a couple of
years back, let alone doing metaprogramming (unless you count
Forth). I've still got much to learn, but I don't feel held
back by the vast scope of the language or anything. Mostly if
I pick up someone else's source I can figure out what it's
doing (some of the template stuff goes slowly). That's after
two years of learning D, and after a long long break from
programming. I'm also 42, which means it starts to become
slower to learn then 30 years ago.
D keeps challenging you. That's the point. Java gives you an
ideology, tells you it's good, it's the best and you follow it.
They tell you "we guys know, we've tried things, and this is the
best". No questions asked. In D people got together and said
"wait a minute ..." It challenges beliefs and ideologies, and
everyone can contribute and make suggestions. For me it changed
my whole way of thinking. OOP no longer exists for me. D is
iconoclastic, and this p*sses people off. You have to rethink all
the time. Not many people want to do that.
[snip]
Impatience is maybe the D community's biggest drawback.
