On Friday, 9 February 2018 at 00:08:56 UTC, Adam D. Ruppe wrote:
On Thursday, 8 February 2018 at 23:50:29 UTC, Ali wrote:
But D, unlike many other languages, promotes itself as
primarily a system programming language
I think that's a mistake too. I'd rebrand it as a "general
purpose" programming language. One language you can use
everywhere. It worked for node.js and electron...
Plenty of "general purpose" programming languages. The issue
being that very few offer classes, no GC, easy syntax, good
tooling and editor support, ...
I noticed a trend with languages with so many going to functional
programming or semi-class based.
From the outside D looks good but there are so many strange
things in the D design, that just infuriate.
- GC ... sure, if only it did not allocate so much on startup. It
makes any other languages look better, by simply having a lower
memory footprint on first comparison. C 0.1MB, C++ 0.2MB, Rust
0.4MB, D 1.4MB, ... Looks inefficient when its simply the whole
1MB allocation. But perception matters!
- import ... really, we are 2018 and people are still wasting our
time to have standard libraries as imports. Its even more fun
when you split, only to need import the array library.
Look how ridiculous C++ like "import std.algorithm, std.conv,
std.functional, std.math, std.regex, std.stdio;" some of the
example on the front page look like.
I see people on Reddit sh*t all over PHP all the time and yet,
its so darn easy and comfortable to not think about writing
import all over the code, just to get default functionality!!
Reddit is full of people who love to hate languages that simply
work.
- Tooling. I will say it again and again until i die, it simply
sucks for Windows users.
How fun is it to see dcd-server taking up between 90 to 120MB and
seeing 10, 12, 15 instances loading into memory eating away 2GB
memory.
Or seeing VSC work with some of the plugins for 5 minutes and
then break again, forcing you to constantly restart VSC. Or how
competing languages seem to provide more cleaner and better
working plugins, with cleaner tool tips ( source documentation )
- Even the example on the front page are so typical "scare away
the newbies". It looks like a cleaner version of C++.
D has always been a love/hate relationship for me. One can see
the work that has gone into it but it feels like a Frankenstein's
monster. Small details, big details, the lack of clear focus.
BetterC just moves resources away from actually implementing a
permanent solution. Instead of maintain one system, you deal with
two. While default D still deals with regressions and issue,
BetterC being incomplete is pushed as the next big thing.
The library has design choices that date back a long time and
nobody dares to touch. The whole constant GC debate is linked to
those design choices. D can do a lot but the layer between both
is so thin that at times you wonder if your dealing with compile
or runtime features. CTFE or not. Talking about CTFE .. Stephan
vanished for a long time busy with work and yet it feels reading
the topics that very few people noticed him missing, despite
working a year on the whole new CTFE engine. Not exactly
motivating for people.
I can talk until i turn blue. I already wrote "a wall of text" as
some say, in the Go topic and that was not even technical issues.
People talk about the need for a clear design focus, leadership
and ... things go on as before. That is D in a nutshell. People
doing what they want, whenever and things stay the same. New
features ( that is always fun ), a few people doing to grunt work
and all the rest comes down to people complaining because they
see no reason to put effort into D, as it feels like a wast of
time. << want to bet that this is the only thing people will
quote, instead of the rest.
But on-topic again:
No GC, yay. Always a win because it makes a language stand out.
Possible for D. NO! Too much design choices that limit the
language. Another D3 rewrite will simply kill D.
D is so tiring. Its the main reason for going with Go, simply
tired of waiting. In this one+ year time watching D, i have seen
blogs, betterC half finished being promoted when D is already
overloaded with features and has already a higher learning curve.
More regressions and bug fix releases because the new features
keep breaking stuff. Some more examples on the front pages. Some
nice external packages that only limited amount of people care
about. And very few things to improving the issues people
mentioned the year before and the year before and the year before.
So again, why do people need to bother? The momentum D build up
in 2016, seem to according tiobe really lost. I remember D
hitting (23) 1% a year ago, now its ranking (29) 0.5%.
Great another wall of text at 2.50 in the morning. Frankly, i can
write a book about D issues, justified or not. It will probably
read like gibberish again and ... some people will cut parts to
quote, complain ... but things will stay the same.
Everything feels so 90% finished, like the effort to finalyse
things is always lacking. You see it everywhere in D. That is my
view... disagree, fine but it does not change the outside
perception of D. D needs a massive cleanup, a focus, probably a
name change to get rid of the reputation...
D, D never changes ( fallout reference ).
