On Monday, 5 October 2015 at 15:46:35 UTC, Jeremy wrote:
Respectfully, I think helping new users get a jump start on their application produces an initial jolt of productivity which in turn helps keep someone motivated.
Jump-starting does not keep them motivated. It makes them invest initially, but at this point retention of a specific type of developers (compiler/runtime capable developers) is more important than recruitment of all kinds of developers.
Rust is taking a lot of that market. Understanding why and doing something about it, is important.
I prefer Andrei's mantra of "...being good at everything C and C++ are good at, and also by being good at many tasks that C and C++ are not good at..."
That's just a mantra, C++ and D are pretty close as far as library authoring goes, but currently D represents lock-in compared to C/C++, provides much fewer options than C++14 compilers/extensions/tooling, also semantically. That is unlikely to change without a focused direction that also takes C++17/20 and Rust into account.
D isn't competing with C++14 / Rust 1.0, it is competing with C++17/20 and Rust 1.X, due to the time it takes to polish. But it is impossible to do anything focused without defining what the target is. And that lack of a focused strategy that is currently a main issue with D's future, because the rest of the programming world _is_ moving.
Here's an entertaining video about the actor model, that represent one established programming model that C++ is not so good at currently (but may become better at):
https://channel9.msdn.com/Shows/Going+Deep/Hewitt-Meijer-and-Szyperski-The-Actor-Model-everything-you-wanted-to-know-but-were-afraid-to-ask
