On Sunday, 15 October 2017 at 20:27:35 UTC, Laeeth Isharc wrote:
D is much less gratifying than other languages for most people.
Just like Windows was more gratifying than Linux for most
people in 2000. And I suppose that's likely to change slowly,
but continue to be the case for a while so long as people
working on Windows don't notice when something isn't working
and fix things at root cause. It's usually not that much more
difficult to do so than work around it, and it usually pays off
even considered selfishly.
I can appreciate your frustration, but considering how many
years knowing a programming language can pay off for, a few
hundred hours spent to learn something new isn't that much.
That's like a couple of months full-time and if it works out
the payback period should easily be a year. Viewed rationally,
that's a pretty good return on investment compared to most
other opportunities available.
In a world where there are lots of smart people and knowledge
is widely available, the barriers to opportunity (there must be
barriers, otherwise the opportunity would be competed away) are
often emotional ones. So I like things where the difficulty is
front-loaded, because they tend to be neglected by modern
people who are used to quick gratification. And whilst it
surely can be frustrating, the situation is already better both
on Windows and as regards documentation and tooling than it was
in 2014. It's not difficult to make little changes towards
what one would like to see oneself.
When you invest this time into a language, you have expectations.
A person expects for a language this old, that every puzzle fits
together without issue.
Call me spoiled if you want but quick gratification it is not.
The time wasted on dealing with issue on D, is time you can have
spend in a different language actually writing code/testing. Its
a barrier to the language its own success when its not as user
friendly as the other languages.
If a person needs to do a action in Windows and it takes him 5
mouse clicks. But hey, under Linux you can do it with one command
line arg, ... the Linux approach sound more easy right? Until you
add the time needed to learn the command and assuming there are
no issues. What is more rewarding or punishing? There is a reason
that Windows is still so popular. Windows does not get in the
way. It just keep working. Can it be improved, yes! MS puts a
massive amount of time and money in there testing. And it shows
in there platform.
Its the same reason why Linux as a desktop OS will never work
out. Too much puzzle pieces that do not fit, too much assumed
that people need ( and have the time ) to learn the complicated
way. A lack of inter-testing beyond just the basic compile tests
( i mean really usage ).
Its easy to see the same attitude in D as a community project.
There are GREAT pieces being written but everybody is working
more as a solo developer, with no clear guideline. That is the
big difference between a language like D and corporate backed
languages.
I can easily think of a dozen extensions to D, that need to be
part of the standard library or extended library of D, like
DCompute, mir-algorithm, ...
Why? Because its again lose projects that you as a end consumer
need to discover. Most of the time written and maintained by one
person. Too much here is so single person focused, that its hard
to see people continue the work if that person has no more time.
Too much here is single issue focused and it shows in the
developers there background, what results in the testing of
platforms, the interaction etc.
Maybe i explain this badly, but D seems has a lot of issues that
people here are not aware off because they are already in the D
mindset. And its those issues that show up the most, when one
first tries this language.
