On Friday, 16 March 2018 at 11:44:59 UTC, Chris wrote:
Would it be possible to find out at DConf in Munich why exactly
D is so popular in Germany (my impression) and in other
countries of Europe (and that general post code) like France,
Italy, GB, Romania and Russia etc.?
My guess is that it has much to do with simple luck.
It's like getting those Goldilock conditions. What I mean by that
is described in the first couple minutes of this TED talk:
https://www.ted.com/talks/david_christian_big_history
In communities those Goldilock conditions are not of physical
nature but of social nature I guess.
For a movement/idea/programming language/... to grow big, it
seems to be important to get the right people into it. The people
who are that passionate about it that they put much afford into
it to convince other people of the value of this new thing. The
ones who are best candidates for something like that are the ones
who are very communicative and have a large social net to
popularize their things on.
What might have happend in Germany is exactly that. The starters
of companies like Funkwerk, Sociomantic and the like saw value in
D and decided to use it heavily. They were able to create a
Goldilock condition by their use and gathered more people around
it.
If you have more people it's more likely to get even bigger
because the possibility of another even bigger Goldilock is
increased. More people mean more connections to other people and
the thing goes on and on.
In the US it was just not that lucky yet.
For sure there are technical facts to consider but if you follow
trends, it doesn't always seem to be the crucial factor to choose
something over the other in technical things.
So finding and convincing or at least introduce such important
people to your new thing might always be the key thing to do.
