On Thursday, 28 January 2016 at 02:46:05 UTC, Mike Parker wrote:
Phobos/Tango divide and the transition to D2. I can tell you anecdotally that things are running on quite a larger scale now than at any other point during that time. More libraries to choose from, more newsgroup traffic, more new people asking questions, more downloads of the compiler (as per the charts Andrei periodically posts), and more across the board. D is much further along than it used to be.
A fair section of the hardcore C/C++ developers have been lost to C++ and Rust. An influx of non hardcore developers does not lead to increased momentum regarding compiler and tooling, but will most likely lead to a increased resistance to breaking changes.
The measures of growth from search engines shows a loss of interest and stagnation.
As far as I can tell the hardcore developers who once viewed D as an upcoming star they dabbled with in anticipation if what will come increasingly view as a something of the past.
I believe these trends can turn around with the right strategy. With no clear strategy I predict that D will:
1. Loose attention of hardcore developers because of incompleteness.
2. Loose non hardcore developers to high level languages with better tooling and improving compilers/infrastructure.
So clearly, delivering on time matters.
