On Wednesday, 3 February 2016 at 19:48:48 UTC, Bubbasaur wrote:
Yes they leave and go to another language with a lot of tools but the new language design sucks or it's slow to developing or have restrictions whatever.
It is possible to position a language as a focused niche alternative, people like to bet on the underdog. That's what attracted me to D 10 years ago. Walter was this courageous geek that singlehandedly challenged the big and bloated C++. I realized D was not finished, but had a favourable impression because my initial expectations were low.
That meant I had low resistance to downloading D again a few years later, and so on. So, even if people are leaving, it is important that they leave without resentment, after all if they were willing to give D a spin once, they might be willing to spin it up a few more times later on. Feel good.
Couldn't some of those "new" people see a great potential on D and write new tools that is lacking right now?
They could, but are they likely to? The most likely group to do system level programming are system level programmers, so realistic articles, presentations and talks that make D look technically interesting are more likely to win them over.
As the "most voted topics" on StackOverflow shows, D has a perceived credibility problem. Being honest and realistic is the best way to address that, IMO.
Perpetrating the idea that D is as big as Swift just hurts D's credibility.
