On Saturday, 12 December 2015 at 16:14:34 UTC, JohnCK wrote:
Sure, I congratulate too, but what I've said is that I think that maybe D lost it's momentum among other languages back then, in fact I think C++ community was aware of this too, and then they started doing all this conferences and being a bit more open-minded, and now there are what I would say "big" competitors like: Go and Rust.
Depends on what is meant by momentum, if we mean growth among enthusiasts then I think the above graphs document that D has been on a plateau since early 2013.
I'm thinking that maybe the @nogc and gc-free focus gained more enthusiasts among the existing D users and perhaps could explain the jump in enthusiasm, but no growth over time.
I think Go has experienced both great gains and then significant losses, but I don't think Go affects D much. Rust was also not so attractive in 2013, so it cannot explain the plateau.
What might explain that there is neither growth or decline is language complexity. Swift seems to have a strong focus on making the language simpler where they can.
A language like Crystal is also very easy to get into for people who know Ruby and want a faster option. Same with Nim and Python perhaps. These have seen some growth right now, despite many alternatives.
I think Jonathan Blow's focus on "friction" makes a lot of sense. When you have options, you go for the options with less friction. D has many of downloads, and has more active marketing than Nim and Crystal, but it does not produce more enthusiasts.
So apparently newbies hit roadbumps that make the transition newbie -> enthusiast difficult. To get past that you most likely need a language/eco system with less complexity.
