On Monday, 29 May 2017 at 16:08:11 UTC, Russel Winder wrote:
A few thoughts not entirely random but without a well thought
out storyline, prompted by a couple of recent threads here.
I like the comment from DConf that D should be the successor to
Vala for writing GObject-based code. We have GtkD and in it
GStreamer. Writing programs in C with them is a real pain in
the a### and using C++ is only a little bit better. Having a
number of exemplar applications showing how good D is for this
sort of application would be a big win. I have been steeling
myself to rewrite Me TV in D for two years, but there is always
another problem that means leaving it in C++ is easier.
GObject code requires RAII and C does not provide it. And the
C++ wrappers do a poor job because of all the dynamic runtime
behaviour the C++ wrapper model badly. D should be able to
cover this ground easily.
My biggest problem of the moment is libdvbv5 and librtlsdr.
DStep seemingly cannot help as yet, and wrapping manually is a
pain, and there is no GIR files for these. Thus D is a non
starter whereas C++ can just use the C header files. This
inability to get past the inertia is a huge barrier. Seriously,
I end up with C++ because the manual wrapping hill is too steep.
And… if the application is written in C++ or C there might be
others willing to join in. As soon as the application is
written in D, there appears to be no audience of people willing
to get stuck in to help evolve the application. So here is the
real barrier: writing GtkD/GStreamerD applications is less
attractive because everyone in the universe expects such
applications to be written in C or C++.
Each person trying to reach over the barrier tends to be an
island to themselves as no-one else seems to give a #### about
the problem that person is interested in. The isolation of the
people trying to get D some traction is arguably the biggest
barrier to traction for D. It's the "no-one does it because
no-one does it" problem.
If everyone in the D community got interested in and just
supplied moral support and advice for everyone else, even
though the application was uninteresting, there might be the
possibility of serious traction. Which then becomes a
self-fulfilling prophesy.
In the mean time the Rust community are trying all of this sort
of marketing to try and prove to themselves they are actually
relevant and not a small clique. OK so they have some financial
support, but maybe that can be got round in the D community.
IMO, the most important thing is getting the job done. I don't
want to write my own pdf generator, my own web socket lib, json
lib,... I just want to get my job done... Some languages are not
fast, nor offer control nor safe, ... they get jobs done for
(most) people. Plus their docs are good for figuring things out
for (most) people.
Majority of developers are probably web developers or
library-consumers using other more technical devs work. Chasing
after companies doesn't help. Its better to capitalise on D's
productivity and make it easy to get things done (as a community).
It's individuals that come together to form companies that end up
being aquired by bigger corps or distrubt the industry.
