On Friday, 23 June 2017 at 07:44:36 UTC, Ecstatic Coder wrote:
Huh? You were asked about concrete action points that in your
PoV would improve dlang.org. You can't just say "make it
(like) python.org" ;-)
Could you maybe try to be a bit preciser and create a more
detailed lists of points on how you would improve dlang.org?
Sorry I can't.
Make it look more like "python.org" is just and exactly what I
mean.
For instance, D is the only scripting language I would use
nowadays.
BUT I would not take the risk to use D instead of C++ to
develop games for instance.
D is actually quite easy to sell a scripting language.
Convincing people to use D instead of C, C++, Java or C# is
another thing.
In my personal case, selling D as a better alternative to
Python, JavaScript or Ruby would have just needed a well chosen
snippet of simple code, which shows me that indeed D is some
kind of strongly-typed JavaScript, à la TypeScript, which is
both easy to learn and use.
And I believe that "python.org" is currently more convincing
for "low-profile" programmers/scripters than "dlang.org".
Just look at the code snippets...
Problem is, low profile programmers aren't the most interesting
target for D right now. You have to choose your battles and I
believe that isn't done enough in D marketing. For example we
have lots of issues promoting the GC because we want to attract
people that like that kind of memory management and at the same
time people that don't. So we end up saying "yeah, we have a GC,
but you can do things without it" and the same question comes
over and over again "make up your mind, is it possible or not to
code in D without GC?".
Right now the marketing targets companies and C++ programmers.
Maybe that's not the way to go but it's the path that was choosen
until now. To those programmers the message our marketing tries
to send is "D is a serious, solid language that gives you the
power to build industry software". It's all about being a rock:
solid, sturdy, there to stay for years to come. Of course on side
channels we talk about it being also a good scripting language
etc, but that's not the main image. An image of scripting
language is likely to make D loose most of its credibility
amongst C++ groups (I may be wrong about it but it's the
impression I get).
What you're proposing is way more than a website modification,
it's a profound marketting change. Maybe it's the right way to
go, but if that's what you want you may want to rethink your
whole approach with the fact that it's not about dlang.org's
cosmetic anymore.
