On Thursday, 23 August 2018 at 07:27:56 UTC, JN wrote:
On Thursday, 23 August 2018 at 06:34:01 UTC, nkm1 wrote:
The only real problem with D is that it's a language designed
with
GC in mind, yet there are numerous attempts to use it without
GC.
Also, supporting GC-less programming gets in the way of
improving
D's GC (which is pretty damn bad by modern standards).
That's the only real technical problem.
I think a large part is defining what kind of users D wants to
attract. There are two main groups of programmers, and there is
a vast rift between those groups. One group is people who are
closer to OOP programming and languages such as Java, C#,
Javascript. These people are OK with things like garbage
collectors and in cases where it matters, have learned to work
around it (avoid allocations in hot loops, etc.). I feel like
D1 was attractive for these people for having the convenience
they are used to from their languages (batteries included
standard library, automatic memory management), with additional
features that their language/environments struggle with (C
interop, native binaries), everything packed
with a very clean syntax.
The second group are the C/C++ programmers, the 'zero cost
abstraction' group. For this group of programmers, any overhead
is a disadvantage, garbage collector is unusable for most
usecases (whether true or not, that's the perception). D1
appealed to those people, for having a clean syntax and the
features they know without having to include the monster that
is Boost. Battlefield was different back then too. Around D2
came the competition, be it Rust, Go, or C++17. Go is appealing
more to the first group of programmers, since it has a GC, and
mostly sticks to webservice usage. Rust is heavily appealing to
the zero-cost abstraction group and C++17 obviously appeals to
C++ folks.
Is it possible to make a language that both groups would be
happy to use? Perhaps, or perhaps the gap is too wide. Is
adding features like dip1000 and betterC spreading ourselves
too thin? Perhaps. Perhaps there are features that aren't
really used, and should be reworked or cut from the language
instead (has anyone ever used contracts?).
D's not UNIX (DNU?), but the first rule of UNIX philosophy is
"Make each program do one thing well. To do a new job, build
afresh rather than complicate old programs by adding new
'features'.". It may or may not be relevant here.
BTW. on the offtopic note - the thread title doesn't look too
good. Imagine being a newcomer, and the first thread you see on
the forum is titled "D is dead".
Not sure about your taxonomy. There are quite a few people
involved in D who are native code C/C++ developers spiritually
and by prior work focus who moved to D and don't mind, in fact
maybe relish the GC. One might include Walter and Andrei in
this. I don't want to speak for Atila but I would like to see his
face if you tell him that he is deep down a Java programmer at
heart, as I don't believe that's quite right. I don't think he
despises the GC even though he has written libraries that make it
easier not to use it.
It's silly to think that languages are in a death match
competition against each other in some zero-sum game because
there's no justification for it. There have never been so many
programmers in the world as today, and in twenty years i doubt
there will be fewer. There have also never been as many
practitioners who write code as part of their job doing something
else as today. Furthermore the amount of code written depends on
the extent to which one can express ones ideas efficiently in
code. I personally would have programmed much less since 2014 if
I had to write in a language I didn't find agreeable, and I would
have hired fewer programmers too - quite a lot of code exists now
that simply wouldn't exist without D.
How can you possibly form an opinion on the different sorts of
programmer ? Most programmers aren't active on social media and
don't work for companies that talk in public about their work.
Go for example just isn't a relevant alternative to what I am
doing except perhaps for DevOps. It solves a different kind of
problem and is intended to be used by a different sort of person
- Google hire a lot of programmers without much experience and
have to find a way to get useful work out off them. That's
different from my own challenges.
For me the relevant alternatives might be Julia and Python. And
even then they aren't very close substitutes.
Implicitly D is even a competitor for VBA because our little DSL
written in D solves many of the problems VBA and Excel are used
for in a much better way. One could have done that in many other
languages too, but it is in D because it was originally written
for another purpose and turns out it solves this problem too.
There's a chap here with a family business where its PHP versus D.
For Bastian it was a modern Pascal dialect Vs D versus Ada.
Most code is written in business and academe. The beautiful
thing about being up and coming is you don't need to take on the
contender. You just need to find a few more adherents from
divers sources. It's absolutely by no means what you want to be
thought of as a threat until it's too late. You want most people
to write you off whilst having a very high appeal to those to
whom you do appeal.
Does D have a very high appeal to certain kinds of programmer?
"So I can work from home and write D? Sounds good, when should I
start?". Another guy. "What are your compensation expectations?"
"I earn X but if it's working in D then we can talk about it - I
could take a pay cut". These aren't callow youth filled with
unrealistic ideas about what it's like to be a programmer or what
it's like working in D.
I think the niche of D is defined differently from conventional
categories that people have come up with. It's especially suited
to some domains yes (these happen to be rapidly growing domains -
they should make an ETF based on the share prices of companies
using D if only they were public) but I think the appeal is based
on values, taste and virtues. As regards the latter you have to
be able to endure a bit of discomfort to get very far with D. So
for what I am doing personally the very things that people
grumble about on Reddit are net positives for me. I need people
who know how to learn and can figure things out without being
instructed step by step what to do.
Many businesses are quite different from each other, particularly
SMEs that create the jobs. Even in my little part of the world
there's a massive difference between companies in the sector and
they do things in quite different ways because they have
different problems, goals and people.
The world of social media is a very different place from the
world of principals making decisions about how to solve their
business challenges. And I tell you that faced with an
understanding of these problems the same people that might write
on media about the problems of D may have a different assessment
when it comes to the practical question of whether D is indeed a
good answer to the practical commercial problem you face.
It's very hard to generalise. If one is in the business of
making predictions one ought to make them concrete and back them
with money as a wager. Otherwise it's just talk. And beyond
talk I don't think concrete actions are more interesting. In
open source more even than business sometimes problems are also
opportunities and it's not deluded happy talk to suggest there's
some benefit in trying to be the change in the world that you
wish to see.
