Re: Quora: Why hasn't D started to replace C++?

[12345swordy via Digitalmars-d]

On Tuesday, 3 April 2018 at 16:21:18 UTC, Joakim wrote:

On Wednesday, 31 January 2018 at 11:42:14 UTC, Seb wrote:

On Wednesday, 31 January 2018 at 10:35:06 UTC, Benny wrote:

[...]


Not sure why that's a bad thing. They all have their ups and 
downs:


[...]


Since some want Quora engagement, I thought I'd mention this 
thread I just stumbled upon, while doing an unrelated google 
search for Nim, that had some mentions of D:


https://www.quora.com/in/Of-the-emerging-systems-languages-Rust-D-Go-and-Nim-which-is-the-strongest-language-and-why

May be worth reading, or someone here might want to add their 
own answer.


There is quite a number of rust fans.

Re: Quora: Why hasn't D started to replace C++?

[Joakim via Digitalmars-d]

On Wednesday, 31 January 2018 at 11:42:14 UTC, Seb wrote:

On Wednesday, 31 January 2018 at 10:35:06 UTC, Benny wrote:

[...]


Not sure why that's a bad thing. They all have their ups and 
downs:


[...]


Since some want Quora engagement, I thought I'd mention this 
thread I just stumbled upon, while doing an unrelated google 
search for Nim, that had some mentions of D:


https://www.quora.com/in/Of-the-emerging-systems-languages-Rust-D-Go-and-Nim-which-is-the-strongest-language-and-why

May be worth reading, or someone here might want to add their own 
answer.

Re: Quora: Why hasn't D started to replace C++?

[Ola Fosheim Grøstad via Digitalmars-d]

On Monday, 12 February 2018 at 09:04:57 UTC, psychoticRabbit 
wrote:
The best C++ can do, is (slowly) think about copying what 
others are doing..to the extent C++ can handle it, and to the 
extent the 'committees' agree to doing it.


Well, most languages are like that... including D.

Re: Quora: Why hasn't D started to replace C++?

[psychoticRabbit via Digitalmars-d]

On Monday, 12 February 2018 at 05:45:13 UTC, Ali wrote:

C++ is expected to add ranges based on this library
https://github.com/ericniebler/range-v3


Yes, but given the significance of C++, it really should be 
leading.. not following (at snails pace).


C++ simply has too much legacy stuff to contend with..and that 
will continue to hold it back.. forever.


The best C++ can do, is (slowly) think about copying what others 
are doing..to the extent C++ can handle it, and to the extent the 
'committees' agree to doing it.


C++ is like a Jackson Pollock painting - I look at it, and think 
to myself...wtf!


Of course it's all in the eye of the beholder.

Re: Quora: Why hasn't D started to replace C++?

[Ali via Digitalmars-d]

On Monday, 12 February 2018 at 04:59:10 UTC, psychoticRabbit 
wrote:
On Sunday, 11 February 2018 at 23:00:40 UTC, Walter Bright 
wrote:
Even little ones like char16_t, char32_t, and being able to 
separate digits with single quotes, and larger ones like 
static if and ranges.


D's support for ranges is probably the single most important 
reason why I choose to use D. (lot's of other very good reasons 
too, but not as important as ranges).


When I look at other languages now, the first thing I want to 
know is, does it have integral support for ranges??


"ranges .. improve safety when compared with iterators because 
they never allow invalid pairs of iterators."


http://www.informit.com/articles/printerfriendly/1407357


C++ is expected to add ranges based on this library
https://github.com/ericniebler/range-v3

Re: Quora: Why hasn't D started to replace C++?

[psychoticRabbit via Digitalmars-d]

On Sunday, 11 February 2018 at 23:00:40 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:
Even little ones like char16_t, char32_t, and being able to 
separate digits with single quotes, and larger ones like static 
if and ranges.


D's support for ranges is probably the single most important 
reason why I choose to use D. (lot's of other very good reasons 
too, but not as important as ranges).


When I look at other languages now, the first thing I want to 
know is, does it have integral support for ranges??


"ranges .. improve safety when compared with iterators because 
they never allow invalid pairs of iterators."


http://www.informit.com/articles/printerfriendly/1407357

Re: Quora: Why hasn't D started to replace C++?

[Walter Bright via Digitalmars-d]

On 2/11/2018 2:16 AM, Russel Winder wrote:

Confirmatory evidence is that Rust does the same thing.


D has an outsized influence that extends way beyond just D users :-)

Consider all the D features that somehow were "completely independently" 
discovered years later by C++!


Even little ones like char16_t, char32_t, and being able to separate digits with 
single quotes, and larger ones like static if and ranges.

Re: Quora: Why hasn't D started to replace C++?

[Ola Fosheim Grøstad via Digitalmars-d]

On Sunday, 11 February 2018 at 15:07:00 UTC, German Diago wrote:
If it is not implementable (it is complex, I agree), why there 
are 3 major compilers?


At least 4: Intel, Microsoft, GCC and Clang. Then you have EDG 
and IBM, probably more.

Re: Quora: Why hasn't D started to replace C++?

[German Diago via Digitalmars-d]

On Sunday, 11 February 2018 at 14:33:33 UTC, psychoticRabbit 
wrote:
On Tuesday, 30 January 2018 at 20:45:44 UTC, Andrei 
Alexandrescu wrote:

https://www.quora.com/Why-hasnt-D-started-to-replace-C++

Andrei


Why indeed!

"I am appalled at the monstrous messes that computer scientists 
can produce under the name of ‘improvements’. It is to efforts 
such as C++ that I here refer. These artifacts are filled with 
frills and features but lack coherence, simplicity, 
understandability and implementability. If computer scientists 
could see that art is at the root of the best science, such 
ugly creatures could never take birth."


If it is not implementable (it is complex, I agree), why there 
are 3 major compilers? I think the future should go towards 
simplification a bit more for the idiomatic code. But there are 
features you cannot ignore in low-level languages: asm embedding, 
bit control, reference vs value, due to register efficiency and 
others. So I do not think it is such a *super bad* choice. In 
day-to-day life you need these things.

Re: Quora: Why hasn't D started to replace C++?

[psychoticRabbit via Digitalmars-d]

On Tuesday, 30 January 2018 at 20:45:44 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu 
wrote:

https://www.quora.com/Why-hasnt-D-started-to-replace-C++

Andrei


Why indeed!

"I am appalled at the monstrous messes that computer scientists 
can produce under the name of ‘improvements’. It is to efforts 
such as C++ that I here refer. These artifacts are filled with 
frills and features but lack coherence, simplicity, 
understandability and implementability. If computer scientists 
could see that art is at the root of the best science, such ugly 
creatures could never take birth."


"Since C is low level and object orientation is an inherently 
high level concept the result is conceptually incoherent."


[ R.P.Mody - C in Education and Software Engineering - 1991 ]

Re: Quora: Why hasn't D started to replace C++?

[Russel Winder via Digitalmars-d]

On Fri, 2018-02-09 at 13:39 -0800, Walter Bright via Digitalmars-d
wrote:
> On 2/9/2018 6:01 AM, Atila Neves wrote:
> > Unit tests are a great idea, right? Try convincing a group of 10
> > programmers who 
> > have never written one and don't know anyone else who has. I have;
> > I failed.
> 
> Unit tests are one of the great success stories of D. I believe it
> was a success 
> because it was so simple to add unit tests to the code, and to run
> those tests.
> 
> D's unit testing system didn't even need to be very good. It just had
> to be 
> *easy*. And that changed everything.

Confirmatory evidence is that Rust does the same thing.

-- 
Russel.
===
Dr Russel Winder  t: +44 20 7585 2200
41 Buckmaster Roadm: +44 7770 465 077
London SW11 1EN, UK   w: www.russel.org.uk


signature.asc
Description: This is a digitally signed message part

Re: Quora: Why hasn't D started to replace C++?

[psychoticRabbit via Digitalmars-d]

On Sunday, 11 February 2018 at 00:15:32 UTC, Ola Fosheim Grostad 
wrote:
On Sunday, 11 February 2018 at 00:06:07 UTC, psychoticRabbit 
wrote:
On Sunday, 11 February 2018 at 00:03:16 UTC, psychoticRabbit 
wrote:
On Tuesday, 30 January 2018 at 20:45:44 UTC, Andrei 
Alexandrescu wrote:

https://www.quora.com/Why-hasnt-D-started-to-replace-C++

Andrei


Why indeed!

Feature D C C++ C# Java (and this was bacvk in
=


(correction to above line)
Feature D C C++ C# Java (and this was back in 2003)

..2003 ..gee.. that was what..15 years ago.


Well, it isn't correct in 2018...


Hence the reason why D hasn't started to replace C++.

i.e C++ continues to evolve..

(except that D got many things right, in the first instance - and 
so D can focus on more important matters ;-)

Re: Quora: Why hasn't D started to replace C++?

[Ola Fosheim Grostad via Digitalmars-d]

On Sunday, 11 February 2018 at 00:06:07 UTC, psychoticRabbit 
wrote:
On Sunday, 11 February 2018 at 00:03:16 UTC, psychoticRabbit 
wrote:
On Tuesday, 30 January 2018 at 20:45:44 UTC, Andrei 
Alexandrescu wrote:

https://www.quora.com/Why-hasnt-D-started-to-replace-C++

Andrei


Why indeed!

Feature D C C++ C# Java (and this was bacvk in
=


(correction to above line)
Feature D C C++ C# Java (and this was back in 2003)

..2003 ..gee.. that was what..15 years ago.


Well, it isn't correct in 2018...

Re: Quora: Why hasn't D started to replace C++?

[psychoticRabbit via Digitalmars-d]

On Sunday, 11 February 2018 at 00:03:16 UTC, psychoticRabbit 
wrote:
On Tuesday, 30 January 2018 at 20:45:44 UTC, Andrei 
Alexandrescu wrote:

https://www.quora.com/Why-hasnt-D-started-to-replace-C++

Andrei


Why indeed!

Feature D C C++ C# Java (and this was bacvk in
=


(correction to above line)
Feature D C C++ C# Java (and this was back in 2003)

..2003 ..gee.. that was what..15 years ago.

Re: Quora: Why hasn't D started to replace C++?

[psychoticRabbit via Digitalmars-d]

On Tuesday, 30 January 2018 at 20:45:44 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu 
wrote:

https://www.quora.com/Why-hasnt-D-started-to-replace-C++

Andrei


Why indeed!

Feature D C C++ C# Java (and this was bacvk in
=
Garbage Collection Yes No No Yes Yes

Functions
=
Function delegates  Yes No No Yes No
Function overloadingYes No Yes Yes Yes
Out function parameters Yes Yes Yes Yes No
Nested functionsYes No No No No
Function literals   Yes No No No No
Dynamic closuresYes No No No No
Covariant return types  Yes No Yes No No

Arrays
==
Lightweight arrays  Yes Yes Yes No No
Resizeable arrays   Yes No No No No
Arrays of bits  Yes No No No No
Built-in stringsYes No No Yes Yes
Array slicing   Yes No No No No
Array bounds checking   Yes No No Yes Yes
Associative arrays  Yes No No No No
Strong typedefs Yes No No No No
Aliases Yes Yes Yes No No

OOP
===
Object Oriented Yes No Yes Yes Yes
Multiple InheritanceNo No Yes No No
Interfaces  Yes No Yes Yes Yes
Operator overloadingYes No Yes Yes No
Modules Yes No Yes Yes Yes
Dynamic class loading   No No No No Yes
Inner classes   No No No No Yes
Covariant return types  Yes No Yes No No

Performance
===
Inline assemblerYes Yes Yes No No
Direct access to hardware   Yes Yes Yes No No
Lightweight objects Yes Yes Yes Yes No
Explicit memory allocation control  Yes Yes Yes No No
Independent of VM   Yes Yes Yes No No
Direct native code gen  Yes Yes Yes No No
Templates   Yes No Yes No No

Reliability
===
Design by Contract  Yes No No No No
Unit testingYes No No No No
Static construction order   Yes No No Yes Yes
Guaranteed initialization   Yes No No Yes Yes
RAIIYes No Yes Yes No
Exception handling  Yes No Yes Yes Yes
try-catch-finally blocksYes No No Yes Yes
Thread synchronization primitives   Yes No No Yes Yes

Compatibility
=
Algol-style syntax  Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Enumerated typesYes Yes Yes Yes No
Support all C types Yes Yes No No No
Long double floating point  Yes Yes Yes No No
Complex and Imaginary   Yes Yes No No No
Direct access to C  Yes Yes Yes No No
Use existing debuggers  Yes Yes Yes No No
Struct member alignment control Yes Yes Yes No No
Generates standard object files Yes Yes Yes No No
Macro preprocessor  No Yes Yes No No

Other
=
Conditional compilation Yes Yes Yes Yes No

Re: Quora: Why hasn't D started to replace C++?

[Jonathan M Davis via Digitalmars-d]

On Friday, February 09, 2018 19:50:48 Walter Bright via Digitalmars-d wrote:
> On 2/9/2018 1:48 PM, Jonathan M Davis wrote:
> > If I were
> > doing all of my personal projects n C++, I don't know how many would be
> > unit tested.
>
> I know how many. Zero.

If I were writing something like std.datetime in C++, I'd go to the trouble
of writing unit tests, and I've written unit testing frameworks for C++
before for work. So, I don't think that it would necessarily be zero, but
it's certainly true that I'd be a lot less willing to go to the effort, and
I almost certainly wouldn't bother for smaller projects.

- Jonathan M Davis

Re: Quora: Why hasn't D started to replace C++?

[Walter Bright via Digitalmars-d]

On 2/9/2018 1:48 PM, Jonathan M Davis wrote:

If I were
doing all of my personal projects n C++, I don't know how many would be unit
tested.


I know how many. Zero.

Re: Quora: Why hasn't D started to replace C++?

[Nick Sabalausky via Digitalmars-d]

On Friday, 9 February 2018 at 22:38:23 UTC, H. S. Teoh wrote:


Proposal: unittests should only be compiled if the module it's 
found in is being compiled (i.e., among the modules listed on 
the command-line), even with -unittest.


if I'm using a 3rd party library, why should I care to run 
*their* unittests?  I'm only interested in testing my own code.


What do you think?



Currently being discussed in another thread, but that's an 
emphatic "YES, definitely". I proposed that awhile back and there 
was a bunch of hemming and hawing and ultimately nothing, but I 
really hope something will come of it this time.

Re: Quora: Why hasn't D started to replace C++?

[H. S. Teoh via Digitalmars-d]

On Fri, Feb 09, 2018 at 01:39:22PM -0800, Walter Bright via Digitalmars-d wrote:
> On 2/9/2018 6:01 AM, Atila Neves wrote:
> > Unit tests are a great idea, right? Try convincing a group of 10
> > programmers who have never written one and don't know anyone else
> > who has. I have; I failed.
> 
> Unit tests are one of the great success stories of D. I believe it was
> a success because it was so simple to add unit tests to the code, and
> to run those tests.

Yeah, it is so simple you feel ashamed for not writing them.  Which in
turn generates a positive feedback loop where your unittests uncovers
bugs early (rather than 2 months later when your customer's box blows
up), so you feel motivated to write more tests, and your code quality
continues improving.


> D's unit testing system didn't even need to be very good. It just had
> to be *easy*. And that changed everything.

Speaking of unittests... currently we have a problem:

import std.regex;
void main() {}

Compiling with -unittest:

real0m1.137s
user0m0.994s
sys 0m0.141s

Compiling without -unittest:

real0m0.528s
user0m0.458s
sys 0m0.069s

The problem: compiling with -unittest causes Phobos unittests to be
instantiated, even if the user isn't compiling Phobos directly.

Proposal: unittests should only be compiled if the module it's found in
is being compiled (i.e., among the modules listed on the command-line),
even with -unittest.

This won't break anything, because as long as user projects compile all
of their modules explicitly, -unittest will still work as before. I'd
guess practically all user projects will do this. (There may be a few
exceptions, e.g., if a module contains only templates, but IIRC even
then you still have to list the module on the command-line, otherwise
some templates won't instantiate correctly.)

It will improve compilation times and reduce executable bloat --
unittests from external libraries that are only linked, not compiled,
won't be included.  It also makes more sense -- if I'm using a 3rd
party library, why should I care to run *their* unittests?  I'm only
interested in testing my own code.

What do you think?


T

-- 
People demand freedom of speech to make up for the freedom of thought which 
they avoid. -- Soren Aabye Kierkegaard (1813-1855)

Re: Quora: Why hasn't D started to replace C++?

[Walter Bright via Digitalmars-d]

On 2/9/2018 6:49 AM, Jonathan M Davis wrote:

The amazing thing is when a programmer tries to argue that having unit tests
makes your code worse - not that they take too long to write or that they
don't want to bother with them or any that - that they somehow make the code
worse.


It's not amazing at all :-)

The reasons people give to not try something new are hardly ever the actual 
reasons. People will make up on the spot reasons that they think you want to 
hear or that sound good. Their actual reasons they keep to themselves because 
they don't sound good.


If you talk with someone enough you'll eventually figure out their actual 
reasons.

Re: Quora: Why hasn't D started to replace C++?

[Jonathan M Davis via Digitalmars-d]

On Friday, February 09, 2018 13:39:22 Walter Bright via Digitalmars-d wrote:
> On 2/9/2018 6:01 AM, Atila Neves wrote:
> > Unit tests are a great idea, right? Try convincing a group of 10
> > programmers who have never written one and don't know anyone else who
> > has. I have; I failed.
> Unit tests are one of the great success stories of D. I believe it was a
> success because it was so simple to add unit tests to the code, and to
> run those tests.
>
> D's unit testing system didn't even need to be very good. It just had to
> be *easy*. And that changed everything.

Yeah. git did the same thing for me for source control. Before, I almost
never did anything with source control with my personal projects, because it
was too much of a pain to set up; you basically had to set up a server to
talk to (even if it was on the same machine), whereas with git, it's just

git init .

and you have a repository. Now, all my source code goes in a git repo unless
it's just a quick test that I'm going to throw away when I'm done. And the
fact that places like github and bitbucket make it so easy to create repos
online means that a lot of my stuff is online too, whereas if I had to use
something like SVN, I'd probably have next to nothing in source control.

And the way that D handles unit tests has had the same effect. If I were
doing all of my personal projects n C++, I don't know how many would be unit
tested. Anything really serious would be, but the extra effort of setting
something up to be able to have unit tests is enough that anything simple
would probably never have any tests, because it would be too much effort for
me to bother. Having unit tests built-in is definitely a game changer.

- Jonathan M Davis

Re: Quora: Why hasn't D started to replace C++?

[Walter Bright via Digitalmars-d]

On 2/9/2018 6:01 AM, Atila Neves wrote:
Unit tests are a great idea, right? Try convincing a group of 10 programmers who 
have never written one and don't know anyone else who has. I have; I failed.


Unit tests are one of the great success stories of D. I believe it was a success 
because it was so simple to add unit tests to the code, and to run those tests.


D's unit testing system didn't even need to be very good. It just had to be 
*easy*. And that changed everything.

Re: Quora: Why hasn't D started to replace C++?

[Ola Fosheim Grøstad via Digitalmars-d]

On Friday, 9 February 2018 at 14:49:27 UTC, Jonathan M Davis 
wrote:
On Friday, February 09, 2018 14:01:02 Atila Neves via 
Digitalmars-d wrote:
Unit tests are a great idea, right? Try convincing a group of 
10 programmers who have never written one and don't know 
anyone else who has. I have; I failed.


The amazing thing is when a programmer tries to argue that 
having unit tests makes your code worse - not that they take 
too long to write or that they don't want to bother with them 
or any that - that they somehow make the code worse.


- Jonathan M Davis


Actually, it can make lazy programmers write worse code if they 
write code to satisfy the tests instead of writing code according 
to the spec...

Re: Quora: Why hasn't D started to replace C++?

[Mark via Digitalmars-d]

On Friday, 9 February 2018 at 14:01:02 UTC, Atila Neves wrote:
Unit tests are a great idea, right? Try convincing a group of 
10 programmers who have never written one and don't know anyone 
else who has. I have; I failed.


Atila


You should have tried to convince them to do TDD. ;)

Re: Quora: Why hasn't D started to replace C++?

[Mark via Digitalmars-d]

On Friday, 9 February 2018 at 13:21:09 UTC, Bo wrote:
For basic technology as database's: Mysql, PostgreSQL, Sqlite, 
Firebird, MongoDB you expect this to be under the standard 
library for D, with official support.


The reason why scripting languages do good in user adaptation 
is simply because they offer all the necessary dependencies as 
official libraries.


Any language that depends on 3th party developers to provide 
this support can never have a standardized structure and forces 
people into making choices they may regret. Add also a total 
lack of quality control.


Does C++ have such support in its standard library?

Re: Quora: Why hasn't D started to replace C++?

[Atila Neves via Digitalmars-d]

On Friday, 9 February 2018 at 14:49:27 UTC, Jonathan M Davis 
wrote:
On Friday, February 09, 2018 14:01:02 Atila Neves via 
Digitalmars-d wrote:
Unit tests are a great idea, right? Try convincing a group of 
10 programmers who have never written one and don't know 
anyone else who has. I have; I failed.


The amazing thing is when a programmer tries to argue that 
having unit tests makes your code worse - not that they take 
too long to write or that they don't want to bother with them 
or any that - that they somehow make the code worse.


- Jonathan M Davis


That's... new. Cognitive dissonance never ceases to amaze me.

Atila

Re: Quora: Why hasn't D started to replace C++?

[Jonathan M Davis via Digitalmars-d]

On Friday, February 09, 2018 14:01:02 Atila Neves via Digitalmars-d wrote:
> Unit tests are a great idea, right? Try convincing a group of 10
> programmers who have never written one and don't know anyone else
> who has. I have; I failed.

The amazing thing is when a programmer tries to argue that having unit tests
makes your code worse - not that they take too long to write or that they
don't want to bother with them or any that - that they somehow make the code
worse.

- Jonathan M Davis

Re: Quora: Why hasn't D started to replace C++?

[Atila Neves via Digitalmars-d]

On Friday, 9 February 2018 at 13:08:25 UTC, Bo wrote:
On Thursday, 8 February 2018 at 03:36:17 UTC, Laeeth Isharc 
wrote:
But really who is selling D to anyone? We are very far from 
that stage right now.  Did someone sell D to Microsoft COM 
team, Remedy or to Weka? Nope.  People who had earned the 
authority to decide became aware of the language end decided 
to use it.  And they did so because for them it solved their 
particular problems better then anything else they could think 
of.


The question one needs to ask is more: how long ago have those 
developers decided to use D and why is the technology not more 
widespread in those companies.


If D solved the issues in those companies, you expect to see a 
increased switch to a language.


That conclusion relies on the assumption that programmers / 
managers / tech leads / CTOs choose programming languages based 
on technical merits alone. While there are certainly people who 
do that, in my experience they are in a small minority.


There's inertia, tribalism, sunk cost fallacy, fear of the 
unknown, fear of change, lack of wanting to invest time in a new 
technology, "if it ain't broke don't fix it" (touted many a time 
by people who either ignore security exploits or justify it 
saying it's not the language's fault but bad programmers), 
popularity, herd mentality, ...


Unit tests are a great idea, right? Try convincing a group of 10 
programmers who have never written one and don't know anyone else 
who has. I have; I failed.


Atila



And yet most of those companies use D in one project and it 
stays in that one project. That means other developers do not 
switch, management has no task to introduce it elsewhere and 
the project is more or less supported by the developer that 
pushed for the technology.

Re: Quora: Why hasn't D started to replace C++?

[Bo via Digitalmars-d]

On Thursday, 8 February 2018 at 15:56:16 UTC, Martin Tschierschke 
wrote:

You will get 9 packages listed. Which should I take?
If you click on everyone, you will realize, that some of them 
are forks of other.
And the version number of mysql-native at the top, just 
recently increased so strong, that it makes a different.
The minimum additional information which should be listed - I 
think - is the number of downloads and GitHub stars.


I know that there is work behind the scene to find some kind of 
weighted sort, this would be cool, but just displaying the 
GitHub voting might help a lot.


The answer to that is simply pick: null.

Two depend on vibe.d core. Several others have not been updated. 
As you stated several are forks. And not a single one is a 
official D supported package.


For basic technology as database's: Mysql, PostgreSQL, Sqlite, 
Firebird, MongoDB you expect this to be under the standard 
library for D, with official support.


The reason why scripting languages do good in user adaptation is 
simply because they offer all the necessary dependencies as 
official libraries.


Any language that depends on 3th party developers to provide this 
support can never have a standardized structure and forces people 
into making choices they may regret. Add also a total lack of 
quality control.


Extra fun: etc.c.sqlite3

Re: Quora: Why hasn't D started to replace C++?

[Bo via Digitalmars-d]

On Thursday, 8 February 2018 at 03:36:17 UTC, Laeeth Isharc wrote:
But really who is selling D to anyone? We are very far from 
that stage right now.  Did someone sell D to Microsoft COM 
team, Remedy or to Weka? Nope.  People who had earned the 
authority to decide became aware of the language end decided to 
use it.  And they did so because for them it solved their 
particular problems better then anything else they could think 
of.


The question one needs to ask is more: how long ago have those 
developers decided to use D and why is the technology not more 
widespread in those companies.


If D solved the issues in those companies, you expect to see a 
increased switch to a language.


And yet most of those companies use D in one project and it stays 
in that one project. That means other developers do not switch, 
management has no task to introduce it elsewhere and the project 
is more or less supported by the developer that pushed for the 
technology.

Re: Quora: Why hasn't D started to replace C++?

[Paulo Pinto via Digitalmars-d]

On Thursday, 8 February 2018 at 03:36:17 UTC, Laeeth Isharc wrote:
On Wednesday, 7 February 2018 at 21:02:11 UTC, data pulverizer 
wrote:
On Tuesday, 30 January 2018 at 20:45:44 UTC, Andrei 
Alexandrescu wrote:

https://www.quora.com/Why-hasnt-D-started-to-replace-C++

Andrei




[...]
But really who is selling D to anyone? We are very far from 
that stage right now.  Did someone sell D to Microsoft COM 
team, Remedy or to Weka? Nope.  People who had earned the 
authority to decide became aware of the language end decided to 
use it.  And they did so because for them it solved their 
particular problems better then anything else they could think 
of.

[...]


This would be relevant if Microsoft actually followed up on that, 
but

it was an one shot prototype, done by one of their employees.

Nothing followed up from there.

Instead what happened was UWP, C++/CX extensions and now with the 
effort lead by

Kenny Kerr, C++/WinRT implemented in C++17.

Re: Quora: Why hasn't D started to replace C++?

[Mengu via Digitalmars-d]

On Thursday, 8 February 2018 at 15:29:08 UTC, Ralph Doncaster 
wrote:
On Wednesday, 7 February 2018 at 22:31:58 UTC, John Gabriele 
wrote:
I'm not sure how long dub has been around, but having an easy 
to use CPAN-alike (online module repo) is HUGE. Dub is great 
for sales. The better dub and the repo gets, the more 
attractive D gets.


I completely agree that the availability of libraries is a huge 
factor.  I almost gave up on D because of the limited amount of 
3rd party libs.

I think just improving the search function would help.
http://code.dlang.org/search?q=keccak
Comes up with nothing, so I started porting a sha3/keccak lib 
from C to D.  Then someone pointed out botan has sha3 support, 
which can be found if you search for "crypto"

http://code.dlang.org/search?q=crypto


i think it is the ecosystem. we do not have a better ecosystem to 
offer and accommodate c++ developers. by ecosystem i mean, things 
that take the pain out of a c++ developer and make them solely 
focus on their code. we don't have an IDE, we don't have one 
perfect, portable GUI library, we don't have a better build 
system, we don't even have a migration guide for them. (d for c++ 
developers page does not count) we only have a better and easier 
language. that's all we have. otherwise i do not think c++ 
developers are sadomasochists that would do this torture to 
themselves. :)

Re: Quora: Why hasn't D started to replace C++?

[Martin Tschierschke via Digitalmars-d]

On Thursday, 8 February 2018 at 15:29:08 UTC, Ralph Doncaster 
wrote:
On Wednesday, 7 February 2018 at 22:31:58 UTC, John Gabriele 
wrote:
I'm not sure how long dub has been around, but having an easy 
to use CPAN-alike (online module repo) is HUGE. Dub is great 
for sales. The better dub and the repo gets, the more 
attractive D gets.


I completely agree that the availability of libraries is a huge 
factor.  I almost gave up on D because of the limited amount of 
3rd party libs.

I think just improving the search function would help.
http://code.dlang.org/search?q=keccak
Comes up with nothing, so I started porting a sha3/keccak lib 
from C to D.  Then someone pointed out botan has sha3 support, 
which can be found if you search for "crypto"

http://code.dlang.org/search?q=crypto

The opposite situation you may see, when searching for mysql:

You will get 9 packages listed. Which should I take?
If you click on everyone, you will realize, that some of them are 
forks of other.
And the version number of mysql-native at the top, just recently 
increased so strong, that it makes a different.
The minimum additional information which should be listed - I 
think - is the number of downloads and GitHub stars.


I know that there is work behind the scene to find some kind of 
weighted sort, this would be cool, but just displaying the GitHub 
voting might help a lot.

Re: Quora: Why hasn't D started to replace C++?

[Ralph Doncaster via Digitalmars-d]

On Wednesday, 7 February 2018 at 22:31:58 UTC, John Gabriele 
wrote:
I'm not sure how long dub has been around, but having an easy 
to use CPAN-alike (online module repo) is HUGE. Dub is great 
for sales. The better dub and the repo gets, the more 
attractive D gets.


I completely agree that the availability of libraries is a huge 
factor.  I almost gave up on D because of the limited amount of 
3rd party libs.

I think just improving the search function would help.
http://code.dlang.org/search?q=keccak
Comes up with nothing, so I started porting a sha3/keccak lib 
from C to D.  Then someone pointed out botan has sha3 support, 
which can be found if you search for "crypto"

http://code.dlang.org/search?q=crypto

Re: Quora: Why hasn't D started to replace C++?

[Laeeth Isharc via Digitalmars-d]

On Thursday, 8 February 2018 at 00:09:47 UTC, Ali wrote:
On Tuesday, 30 January 2018 at 20:45:44 UTC, Andrei 
Alexandrescu wrote:

https://www.quora.com/Why-hasnt-D-started-to-replace-C++

Andrei


my modest opinion about this

D currently is a small player, that have an attractive 
proposition for some


* it is like C++ (that is close to the power of C++) but simpler
* it have some unique advanced feature related to meta 
programming


D's best hope is to be a bigger player, it is unrealistic to 
replace c++

Any improvement made to D will help make it a bigger player

And while some D features can be better advertised
(like Design by Contract, DbC is a big deal, and few other 
languages are know to have it)


I think D need to constantly add features, the idea that D is 
big enough, or that it needs more idioms rather than features, 
is in my opinion wrong


D need to constantly add features, because all of it 
competitions are constantly adding features


As D add features, it may have a breakthrough, at some point


Maybe features help, but there's also just a natural process of 
maturation that we don't notice because it happens slowly.


In 2014 when I started using D it wasn't unusual for the 
compilers to segfault.  And since I didn't know D, or even modern 
compilers, their flags etc (beyond a bit of work in visual studio 
in the late 90s, I mostly learnt to program C on 8 bit CP/M, 
which was a bit different then),it was quite a confusing 
experience.  I couldn't have recommended D to somebody else then.


The documentation also was not very accessible to people who 
didn't think formally and were used to Python material.  I tried 
working with one chap, a trader who knew a bit of python and he 
was absolutely terrified of the D documentation.


The situation there is also rather better today.

Then again, how can I trust the compiler.  It means something 
that Liran at Weka said they haven't had any data corruption 
bugs, because data on they scale tends to find problems and bring 
them to the fore.


From what I have seen, big changes, much more than is generally 
appreciated are often not a consequence only of one big causal 
factor, but lots of little things aligned and coming together.


However if you want a big thing just consider growth in data set 
sizes and storage capacity and related that to trends in 
processor power and memory speed.


Guido says python is fast enough because you are bottlenecked on 
I/O and network.  But in my office I have a test infiniband 
network where the 40 Gbps switch cost about 600 quid (that's old 
technology now).  NVMe drives do pretty decent throughput.  Json 
parsing is not the cleverest thing one can do with data but how 
does that compare with the throughput from just a couple of nvme 
drives?


And according to the ACM a fundamental assumption that held true 
since the dawn of computing is in the process of being 
overturned.   With storage class memory and newer network 
technology (there's a road map to get to 1Tbps) the bottleneck 
from here isnt storage or network - it's CPU.


I guess that won't hurt the adoption of D.  Not tomorrow, but 
slowly over time.

Re: Quora: Why hasn't D started to replace C++?

[Laeeth Isharc via Digitalmars-d]

On Wednesday, 7 February 2018 at 21:02:11 UTC, data pulverizer 
wrote:
On Tuesday, 30 January 2018 at 20:45:44 UTC, Andrei 
Alexandrescu wrote:

https://www.quora.com/Why-hasnt-D-started-to-replace-C++

Andrei


The Betamax Problem

When you introduce something new, how do you know that it is 
going to be compelling enough for people to move from whatever 
it is they are doing and use your new thing?


It is not an easy question to answer but in the realm of 
programming languages it's a very tough question, because 
people are going to have to learn a whole new language, and its 
going to come with costs and potentially unquantifiable risks 
for any company that attempts to shift to that language. So 
whatever it is you are offering has to be tremendously 
compelling compared to what is already there.


A great deal of confusion in the world arises from failing to 
make distinctions between things that appear to be the same but 
really aren't when you look closely.


Also, in about 1870 odd there was a revolution in economic 
thought that took place more or less simultaneously in Vienna, 
Lausanne and Cambridge.  The Marginal Revolution had yet to be 
fully digested in the way people think about social phenomena.


My director of studies at Cambridge, Lord Eatwell, Labour 
spokesman in the House of Lords,  was known for his devotion to 
the work of Pierro Sraffa, a man known principally for a rather 
hostile book review of a book by Hayek and a rather slim book of 
his own, Production of Commodities by Means of Commodities, a 
book that tried to draw insights about the economy from a model 
with two goods, corn and gold.


And I think considering firms as homogeneous, with the same 
cultural values  and facing the same situation will be about as 
insightful as I think Sraffa's work ended up being - not very.


Life is risk.  It's risky to get out of bed in the morning, but 
it's also risky not to get out of bed.  And it's true that an 
agent acting on behalf of someone else - ie a manager who has no 
stake in the business - will often think about things first in 
terms of not taking a decision that might lead him to be blamed.  
But most firms are not large enterprises, and in the US small and 
medium sized firms over time create more than 100% of job growth, 
last I checked.  And a manager who is also at least to some 
extent a principal ie an owner in the business knows that to be 
conservative in a time of change is not necessarily prudent, and 
it may well also not be the profit maximising choice.


As someone who is both a manager and a part owner I disagree that 
a new technology choice needs to be overwhelmingly compelling to 
be considered.  And I don't get paid to make decisions about 
things that are easily quantifiable - what for you need me for if 
the numbers are straightforward?


The reality is that firms are very different, in a dynamic 
industry even within the same sector they are different.  And at 
any one time there are a bunch of people close to trying D or 
more.  You don't need to persuade everyone to grow.  You just 
need to persuade a few more people to tip over the margin.  And 
there are often plenty of safe ways to take risks.  You just need 
to make sure you have a plan B.  Listen to Manu's talk for a real 
example of what I mean.  And note that he said Finns are very 
conservative.


An important question is what problem set does D solve? It's 
very hard to sell a language to industry without convincingly 
answering that question. If you are selling them a 'better' 
language - that's a tougher sell. If you are selling a solution 
to a particular problem set - you stand better a chance.


But really who is selling D to anyone? We are very far from that 
stage right now.  Did someone sell D to Microsoft COM team, 
Remedy or to Weka? Nope.  People who had earned the authority to 
decide became aware of the language end decided to use it.  And 
they did so because for them it solved their particular problems 
better then anything else they could think of.


For a manager to consider D as the successor to C++, it doesn't 
just have to be a better language design than C++, it has to 
have the best language design of any compiled language and 
demonstrate the best performance.


Why?  Best in what way? Best for whom and for what kind of 
problems?


I completely disagree with that.   It needs just to be better in 
the situation then the conceivable alternatives.  And situations 
and challenges are really quite different between firms.


 Is the former really true?
Are various language features that have been inherited from 
C++/Java the best way forward? For instance does D have the 
best approach to object oriented programming, or templates? Or 
any important set of features you care to mention? Are there 
things that C++ does better than D? How straightforward is it 
to get great performance from D? Is how do you 'tune' your D 
code for high performance obvious or well 

Re: Quora: Why hasn't D started to replace C++?

[Ali via Digitalmars-d]

On Tuesday, 30 January 2018 at 20:45:44 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu 
wrote:

https://www.quora.com/Why-hasnt-D-started-to-replace-C++

Andrei


my modest opinion about this

D currently is a small player, that have an attractive 
proposition for some


* it is like C++ (that is close to the power of C++) but simpler
* it have some unique advanced feature related to meta programming

D's best hope is to be a bigger player, it is unrealistic to 
replace c++

Any improvement made to D will help make it a bigger player

And while some D features can be better advertised
(like Design by Contract, DbC is a big deal, and few other 
languages are know to have it)


I think D need to constantly add features, the idea that D is big 
enough, or that it needs more idioms rather than features, is in 
my opinion wrong


D need to constantly add features, because all of it competitions 
are constantly adding features


As D add features, it may have a breakthrough, at some point

Re: Quora: Why hasn't D started to replace C++?

[John Gabriele via Digitalmars-d]

On Wednesday, 7 February 2018 at 21:02:11 UTC, data pulverizer 
wrote:
On Tuesday, 30 January 2018 at 20:45:44 UTC, Andrei 
Alexandrescu wrote:

https://www.quora.com/Why-hasnt-D-started-to-replace-C++

Andrei


The Betamax Problem


I don't think the analogy holds. With VHS and betamax, you just 
put in the tape and watch your movie. Most people didn't care 
very much what the name on the machine said --- both types of 
machines had the same buttons.


In contrast to that, programmers are very particular about the 
languages they use (which includes tooling, community, module 
repos, available books).


An important question is what problem set does D solve? It's 
very hard to sell a language to industry without convincingly 
answering that question. If you are selling them a 'better' 
language - that's a tougher sell. If you are selling a solution 
to a particular problem set - you stand better a chance.


My impression is that the object is not necessarily to sell D to 
industry, but rather to sell it to developers. Developers choose 
what they want to learn and use at home and in side projects. 
Then at work some tools here and there get written in it. Then 
some customer-facing projects. Before you know it, it's been 
"sold to industry".


I think, as of last year, D has upped its sales (to developers) 
game:


  * fully open-sourced dmd

  * GDC slated for inclusion into GCC

  * there's been talk of adding some markdown features to ddoc. 
Cosmetic, yes; sells D well to developers, emphatically yes.


I'm not sure how long dub has been around, but having an easy to 
use CPAN-alike (online module repo) is HUGE. Dub is great for 
sales. The better dub and the repo gets, the more attractive D 
gets.

Re: Quora: Why hasn't D started to replace C++?

[data pulverizer via Digitalmars-d]

On Tuesday, 30 January 2018 at 20:45:44 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu 
wrote:

https://www.quora.com/Why-hasnt-D-started-to-replace-C++

Andrei


The Betamax Problem

When you introduce something new, how do you know that it is 
going to be compelling enough for people to move from whatever it 
is they are doing and use your new thing?


It is not an easy question to answer but in the realm of 
programming languages it's a very tough question, because people 
are going to have to learn a whole new language, and its going to 
come with costs and potentially unquantifiable risks for any 
company that attempts to shift to that language. So whatever it 
is you are offering has to be tremendously compelling compared to 
what is already there.


An important question is what problem set does D solve? It's very 
hard to sell a language to industry without convincingly 
answering that question. If you are selling them a 'better' 
language - that's a tougher sell. If you are selling a solution 
to a particular problem set - you stand better a chance.


For a manager to consider D as the successor to C++, it doesn't 
just have to be a better language design than C++, it has to have 
the best language design of any compiled language and demonstrate 
the best performance. Is the former really true? Are various 
language features that have been inherited from C++/Java the best 
way forward? For instance does D have the best approach to object 
oriented programming, or templates? Or any important set of 
features you care to mention? Are there things that C++ does 
better than D? How straightforward is it to get great performance 
from D? Is how do you 'tune' your D code for high performance 
obvious or well documented?


If the answers to any of the above questions is a negative for D, 
that's a serious problem if what you want to do is replace C++, 
because C++ is already a solid well know language and the 
competition from new programming languages is extremely tough, 
and because its only going to get easier to create programming 
languages this competition will get tougher.


To finish the Betamax story, when CD came along, people dropped 
cassette tapes like hot potatoes and DVDs killed VHS stone dead. 
Does D represent a similar leap from C++?


I'm not saying that D is Betamax. I'm just giving food for 
thought.

Re: Quora: Why hasn't D started to replace C++?

[John Gabriele via Digitalmars-d]

On Friday, 2 February 2018 at 14:30:25 UTC, Russel Winder wrote:
On Thu, 2018-02-01 at 19:28 +, John Gabriele via 
Digitalmars-d wrote:
On Thursday, 1 February 2018 at 03:00:07 UTC, Walter Bright 
wrote:

> On 1/31/2018 5:58 PM, H. S. Teoh wrote:
> > cosmetic features.
> 
> I tough lesson I've learned is that cosmetics matter, a lot. 
> Sometimes much more than substance. There's no getting away 
> from it.


I agree but only if s/Markdown/AsciiDoctor/g

This is one reason I recommend markdown for docs. Cosmetics is 
what markdown does best. People *like* looking at it and 
editing it. It's like typing an email or a forum comment.


Other reasons I recommend it are:

   * everyone already knows it (it's at github, stackoverflow, 
and

reddit),

   * it's fairly easy to write (as easy as possible while still
looking good),

   * there's an open spec (CommonMark), and

   * writing new language-specific markup formats appears to be
something that's not done anymore. There's javadoc, texinfo,
doxygen, docbook, groff --- all very ... *mature* technologies.
In modern projects: Rust uses markdown, Python uses reST, Git
uses asciidoc --- all general-purpose non- language-specific
lightweight markup formats.

The only reason I can think of for *not* using markdown for 
project docs is if your project is another competing 
lightweight markup format.


Markdown was created to write a few HTML pages. AsciiDoc (and 
thus AsciiDoctor) was invented to be a front end to the 
DocBook/XML toolchain.


Thus Markdown is for a few small very simple webpages, 
AsciiDoctor is for creating any form of document from a page to 
a book. They are similar where Markdown has functionality, but 
AsciiDoctor has so much more, and most people end up finding 
they want all the extras. XeLaTeX and Sphinx/ReStructuredText 
are the competition for AsciiDoctor. Markdown is lacking in 
functionality people will find they need to use.


Note that markdown is a small sharp tool in your toolbox: for 
writing easily readable (in plain text) docs, easily converted to 
html. For more than that, tools like [Pandoc](http://pandoc.org):


  * convert markdown to html but also to a bunch of other formats 
as well, and


  * support extra markdown functionality like tables, definition 
lists, footnotes, and citations. Don't know how if handles making 
an index.


Also, note that it's not uncommon to write a short script that 
stitches together a handful of markdown docs into a website or 
other larger composite doc. I even wrote one myself: 
. 
There may be others listed at 
.

Re: Quora: Why hasn't D started to replace C++?

[John Gabriele via Digitalmars-d]

On Friday, 2 February 2018 at 14:25:53 UTC, Russel Winder wrote:
On Thu, 2018-02-01 at 19:41 +, John Gabriele via 
Digitalmars-d wrote:



[…]
It's trivial to put multiple markdown files together into a 
large doc, if that's desired. Just put a bunch of .md files 
together into the same directory and run your markdown 
processor on them. They can link to each other in the [normal 
way](./other-file.html#normal-way).


Auto generation of contents pages, and indexes? Tables? Nested 
lists? The CommonMark crib sheet says nothing. AsciiDoctor has 
all of them, though I prefer XeLaTeX.


CommonMark is the less featureful common denominator markdown. 
For myself, to get TOC's and tables I use 
[Pandoc](http://pandoc.org/).


But I see your point. For larger complete documents like books, 
you want tools that can handle all the things that books require.


But, afaik, we're talking about 2 specific needs here:

 1. documenting code in a way that gets extracted and rendered 
into html

 2. dlang.org doc webpages

with a secret 3rd need: you want contributors to be willing to 
write and update these.


Markdown provides a simple, practical, modern, and 
commonly-known way to get docs written fast and by anyone who 
wants to pop in and improve them. There's no easier way to 
write plain text docs that look as good.


AsciiDoctor.


Everyone already knows and uses Markdown. It's so common that it 
gets used in plain text forums like this one, sometimes without 
folks even knowing they're using it. For short plain text docs 
that may be converted to html, markdown has won and is the 
easiest on-ramp for some writer who has a few minutes and is 
willing to write some doc-comments for a function (or a confusing 
passage in the docs) that they just stumbled over.


Sorry, can't recall if I already mentioned this, but D suffers 
from a perception that it's "old", or "the language that tried 
and failed to replace C++". Something simple like markdown for 
its docs sends a clear message that D is modern and knows when 
to pivot to new and better ways after the old ways are not 
serving it anymore.


Markdown is so last decade. Ditto AsciiDoctor. XeLateX so last 
millenium. The question is choosing the right tool for the job, 
not pandering to hipster fashionistas. Clearly one reviews new 
ways and moves to them if that provides a better way forward, 
but the goal is more important that the technology.


I wouldn't say markdown is last decade (not sure if you're 
joking). More like it's simply become part of the background at 
this point since it's so commonly used.


But I agree about not pandering to fashion. The goal is to make 
it as easy as possible to document your code and have tools 
render it as html for users to make use of, as well as making it 
easy as possible for potential contributors to jump in and make 
edits/improvements. I think markdown is the best way to acheive 
that goal.


There are the autogenerated reference pages. JavaDoc, Doxygen, 
all have their upside and downside. D has DDOC, is it fit for 
purpose? Should it be replaced (by Doxygen) or evolved? Maybe 
Markdown fits here, but without table support you end up 
hacking stuff. cf. vast tracts of early JavaDoc stuff.


Pandoc extends CommonMark and has tables, definiton lists, and a 
couple of other things worth imitating. Regarding tables, it 
supports three styles (again, the default easy-on-the-eyes style, 
plus a couple others --- see their docs). See 
.





Incidentally, choosing an established standard like markdown 
is a good way to short-circuit bikeshedding about "it what 
ways should ddoc be updated to include some markdown 
features?". Just pick standard CommonMark markdown and you're 
done.


s/Markdown/AsciiDoctor/g


AsciiDoctor appears to be tuned for writing long docs like books. 
Markdown beats it on looks, convenience, and popularity --- 
exactly the things you want to attract folks to writing more 
comment docs and web pages.


One last note and I'll (try to!) stop: it's difficult enough 
to get good writers to help with docs. Much more so when 
they've got to first learn your own language-specific markup 
(which is only useful with your project).


This is a good and strong point, that has been raised in many 
other places I frequent. One group changed from their custom 
DocBook/XML to Sphinx because someone did stuff rather than 
talking about it. AsciiDoctor would clearly have been a better 
solution, evolution using the DocBook toolchain, but they went 
for the revolution because people put effort into it to make 
the decision happen.


The core point is how are you going to get pull requests from 
people to update and evolve the documentation. An esoteric, 
indeed unique, markup language is clearly the wrong choice.


I don't understand your comment there. I group DDoc, Docbook XML, 
DDoc, Texinfo, groff, etc. all in the same esoteric unique markup 
languages camp. If I wanted to 

Re: Quora: Why hasn't D started to replace C++?

[Jan Knepper via Digitalmars-d]

On 01/31/2018 10:01 PM, Walter Bright wrote:

On 1/31/2018 6:14 PM, Jonathan M Davis wrote:
I have to wonder if my settings are right. I've never noticed any 
color in
error messages. Messing around with some errors right now, the only 
color I

see is that "Error:" is in red, and some of the text is bolded, so it's
white instead of the grey that text is normally on my console. Maybe my
console's settings aren't interacting with the color stuff very well.


Nah, it's just the code in dmd:

    if (username == "Jonathan")
    color = off;    // muwa-ha-ha-hah!

Re: Quora: Why hasn't D started to replace C++?

[Nick Sabalausky (Abscissa) via Digitalmars-d]

On 02/01/2018 11:17 AM, H. S. Teoh wrote:

On Thu, Feb 01, 2018 at 03:47:50PM +, Russel Winder via Digitalmars-d wrote:


For me:

aptitude install ldc
aptitude install gdc
aptitude install dmd-bin
aptitude install dub

Seems to work fine, and no conflicts.

[...]

Only because the OS has a sane packaging system (and some people were
kind enough to package the compilers in nice packages). For
less-privileged OSes, the user experience could be drastically
different. ;-)



Extracting the archive and just...using the compiler inside...always 
worked fine for me on every Windows and Linux I ever tried.

Re: Quora: Why hasn't D started to replace C++?

[psychoticRabbit via Digitalmars-d]

On Sunday, 4 February 2018 at 18:00:22 UTC, Russel Winder wrote:
On Fri, 2018-02-02 at 21:21 +, 12345swordy via 
Digitalmars-d wrote:



[…]
Would it be easier for hire a proven manager(Or at least look 
for mangers that are able to volunteer)?


What the D Foundation needs is a CEO who is a good CEO. Good 
CTOs

rarely make good CEO, though it is possible.


ok..maybe we can agree on that ..at least ;-)

"The software product itself is valuable but is not the key to 
understanding open source. The process is what matters most."

 - Steven Weber (The Political Economy of Open Source Software)

Re: Quora: Why hasn't D started to replace C++?

[Ola Fosheim Grøstad via Digitalmars-d]

On Sunday, 4 February 2018 at 18:00:22 UTC, Russel Winder wrote:
What the D Foundation needs is a CEO who is a good CEO. Good 
CTOs

rarely make good CEO, though it is possible.


Well, I don't think making some hard decisions about memory 
management, which is the most apparent issue with D, is a CTO/CEO 
problem.  It is more an issue of not being willing to make some 
sacrifices in order to gain momentum.


If "better C" is the new strategy, then that is fine, if that 
means you will make "better C" the main focus, going lean.


If it means that you have essentially forked into two main 
directions... then it just makes it even harder to gain momentum.

Re: Quora: Why hasn't D started to replace C++?

[Russel Winder via Digitalmars-d]

On Fri, 2018-02-02 at 21:21 +, 12345swordy via Digitalmars-d wrote:
> 
[…]
> Would it be easier for hire a proven manager(Or at least look for 
> mangers that are able to volunteer)?

What the D Foundation needs is a CEO who is a good CEO. Good CTOs
rarely make good CEO, though it is possible.
 
-- 
Russel.
===
Dr Russel Winder  t: +44 20 7585 2200
41 Buckmaster Roadm: +44 7770 465 077
London SW11 1EN, UK   w: www.russel.org.uk


signature.asc
Description: This is a digitally signed message part

Re: Quora: Why hasn't D started to replace C++?

[Russel Winder via Digitalmars-d]

On Sun, 2018-02-04 at 01:53 +, psychoticRabbit via Digitalmars-d
wrote:
> 
> […]

> In my experience, there is nothing worse than a 'learnt' manager 
> ;-)

I disagree.

> People either have the gift, or they do not. Most do not.

Again I disagree.

> (if they have the gift, then improving their skills is a good 
> thing - otherwise they are best doing something they are good at).

The point here is that organisations should not be structured via
management as the metric – good technical people should not have to
move to management in order to be promoted. Promoting good technical
people to positions of management is rarely a good move, sometimes it
works, but not as often as the system is set up to require.

Likewise a good CTO rarely makes a good CEO. 

What The D Foundation needs is a CEO who is a good CEO.
 
-- 
Russel.
===
Dr Russel Winder  t: +44 20 7585 2200
41 Buckmaster Roadm: +44 7770 465 077
London SW11 1EN, UK   w: www.russel.org.uk


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Re: Quora: Why hasn't D started to replace C++?

[psychoticRabbit via Digitalmars-d]

On Saturday, 3 February 2018 at 15:33:01 UTC, Russel Winder wrote:
Who is your management mentor? It is making your job harder if 
you are trying to teach yourselves purely from experience. Been 
there done that, made much better progress after reading:


In my experience, there is nothing worse than a 'learnt' manager 
;-)


People either have the gift, or they do not. Most do not.

(if they have the gift, then improving their skills is a good 
thing - otherwise they are best doing something they are good at).

Re: Quora: Why hasn't D started to replace C++?

[Russel Winder via Digitalmars-d]

On Fri, 2018-02-02 at 13:14 -0800, Walter Bright via Digitalmars-d
wrote:
> On 2/2/2018 11:08 AM, Russel Winder wrote:
> > Hummm… could it be that Andrei did not define the task
> > appropriately,
> > train the person appropriately, and mentor the person
> > appropriately.
> > Management has to be able to delegate and achieve required results
> > without doing the work themselves.
> 
> Of course. But all that is far easier said than done.

It is a learned skill for most people, very few people can do it
without training or at least mentoring.

> Andrei and I are not born managers, we are learning as we go. So I
> ask for your 
> indulgence and understanding where we fall short.

Who is your management mentor? It is making your job harder if you are
trying to teach yourselves purely from experience. Been there done
that, made much better progress after reading:

https://www.amazon.com/Leading-Self-Directed-Teams-Kimball-Fisher/dp/00
71349243

and even better having the use of a mentor. Admittedly though this was
office-based not distributed team work.
  
-- 
Russel.
===
Dr Russel Winder  t: +44 20 7585 2200
41 Buckmaster Roadm: +44 7770 465 077
London SW11 1EN, UK   w: www.russel.org.uk


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Re: Quora: Why hasn't D started to replace C++?

[rjframe via Digitalmars-d]

On Fri, 02 Feb 2018 20:04:33 +, Seb wrote:

> Not could - it's now is:
> https://forum.dlang.org/post/tzyleprmwjmdnjhhp...@forum.dlang.org

Sometimes y'all get things done so quickly I'm surprised everybody's a 
volunteer.

--Ryan

Re: Quora: Why hasn't D started to replace C++?

[12345swordy via Digitalmars-d]

On Friday, 2 February 2018 at 21:14:12 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:

On 2/2/2018 11:08 AM, Russel Winder wrote:
Hummm… could it be that Andrei did not define the task 
appropriately,
train the person appropriately, and mentor the person 
appropriately.
Management has to be able to delegate and achieve required 
results

without doing the work themselves.


Of course. But all that is far easier said than done.

Andrei and I are not born managers, we are learning as we go. 
So I ask for your indulgence and understanding where we fall 
short.


Would it be easier for hire a proven manager(Or at least look for 
mangers that are able to volunteer)?

Re: Quora: Why hasn't D started to replace C++?

[Walter Bright via Digitalmars-d]

On 2/2/2018 11:08 AM, Russel Winder wrote:

Hummm… could it be that Andrei did not define the task appropriately,
train the person appropriately, and mentor the person appropriately.
Management has to be able to delegate and achieve required results
without doing the work themselves.


Of course. But all that is far easier said than done.

Andrei and I are not born managers, we are learning as we go. So I ask for your 
indulgence and understanding where we fall short.

Re: Quora: Why hasn't D started to replace C++?

[Paolo Invernizzi via Digitalmars-d]

On Friday, 2 February 2018 at 18:17:30 UTC, H. S. Teoh wrote:

On Fri, Feb 02, 2018 at 03:06:57PM +, Mark via

It has, to some extent. But the fundamental problem remains 
that more manpower is needed so that he can be freed up to do 
the more important things.  Having to personally review all new 
public symbols added to Phobos, for example, just doesn't seem 
scalable in the long run.  But, as Andrei himself said, the 
last time he left that decision to somebody else, there was a 
noticeable deterioration in the quality of code in Phobos.  So 
we need not only more manpower, but also more *trusted* 
manpower; people who share the same views as Andrei, whom he 
can trust to make the right decisions without his intervention.


There's no silver bullet to this, and it's indeed a very 
difficult task.


Having done this for a lot of my life, my advice is simply to 
keep that always present in every decision, and, sometime, be 
more permissive in the short term decisions, to just archive that 
more important long term goal.


Growing (and discovering!), talents it's indeed a job by itself.

/P

Re: Quora: Why hasn't D started to replace C++?

[Seb via Digitalmars-d]

On Thursday, 1 February 2018 at 11:40:32 UTC, rjframe wrote:

On Thu, 01 Feb 2018 11:11:20 +, Martin Tschierschke wrote:


Idea: There should be some kind of news ticker for all 
enhancements and important decisions, maybe at first just via 
twitter  with a special #tag  beside #dlang where all updates 
are announced. And a place on the homepage, where this feed is 
displayed separately.


The announce forum gets most things; if you're not reading it 
you'll want to (between that and the changelog for the compiler 
and library, that's most activity). A twitter bot to pull all 
announce posts from core committers might not be a bad idea.


Not could - it's now is: 
https://forum.dlang.org/post/tzyleprmwjmdnjhhp...@forum.dlang.org

Re: Quora: Why hasn't D started to replace C++?

[H. S. Teoh via Digitalmars-d]

On Fri, Feb 02, 2018 at 07:08:47PM +, Russel Winder wrote:
> On Fri, 2018-02-02 at 10:17 -0800, H. S. Teoh via Digitalmars-d wrote:
> […]
> > It has, to some extent. But the fundamental problem remains that
> > more manpower is needed so that he can be freed up to do the more
> > important things.  Having to personally review all new public
> > symbols added to Phobos, for example, just doesn't seem scalable in
> > the long run.  But, as Andrei himself said, the last time he left
> > that decision to somebody else, there was a noticeable deterioration
> > in the quality of code in Phobos.  So we need not only more
> > manpower, but also more *trusted* manpower; people who share the
> > same views as Andrei, whom he can trust to make the right decisions
> > without his intervention.
> 
> Hummm… could it be that Andrei did not define the task appropriately,
> train the person appropriately, and mentor the person appropriately.
> 
> Management has to be able to delegate and achieve required results
> without doing the work themselves.
[...]

Exactly.  Tech people like us tend to shy away from this sort of thing,
but it's clearly something sorely needed here.


T

-- 
Verbing weirds language. -- Calvin (& Hobbes)

Re: Quora: Why hasn't D started to replace C++?

[Russel Winder via Digitalmars-d]

On Fri, 2018-02-02 at 10:17 -0800, H. S. Teoh via Digitalmars-d wrote:
> 
[…]
> It has, to some extent. But the fundamental problem remains that more
> manpower is needed so that he can be freed up to do the more
> important
> things.  Having to personally review all new public symbols added to
> Phobos, for example, just doesn't seem scalable in the long
> run.  But,
> as Andrei himself said, the last time he left that decision to
> somebody
> else, there was a noticeable deterioration in the quality of code in
> Phobos.  So we need not only more manpower, but also more *trusted*
> manpower; people who share the same views as Andrei, whom he can
> trust
> to make the right decisions without his intervention.

Hummm… could it be that Andrei did not define the task appropriately,
train the person appropriately, and mentor the person appropriately.

Management has to be able to delegate and achieve required results
without doing the work themselves.

-- 
Russel.
===
Dr Russel Winder  t: +44 20 7585 2200
41 Buckmaster Roadm: +44 7770 465 077
London SW11 1EN, UK   w: www.russel.org.uk


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Re: Quora: Why hasn't D started to replace C++?

[H. S. Teoh via Digitalmars-d]

On Fri, Feb 02, 2018 at 03:06:57PM +, Mark via Digitalmars-d wrote:
> On Wednesday, 31 January 2018 at 23:38:22 UTC, H. S. Teoh wrote:
[...]
> > And I'll be frank that sometimes Andrei can take some effort to
> > convince, and it takes a certain amount of dogged persistence (and
> > thick-skin) to get through to him sometimes. And it doesn't help
> > that he has so much on his plate, and generally doesn't have enough
> > time to dedicate to all the decisions waiting upon him to make, so
> > sometimes it can be frustrating trying to get through to him.
[...]

It seems that what I said above caused a bit of a stir.  So let me
clarify that it was not intended to be a personal critique of Andrei,
and I apologize if it came across that way.  It was more intended as a
friendly dig on, shall we say, one of his more endearing personality
traits -- strong opinions on technical issues and the guts to stick to
them.  And to his credit, I don't know if somebody else in his shoes
would be able to do better than he does now.  Having to make sometimes
tough decisions, e.g., rejecting work that somebody put a lot of effort
into for the sake of the larger picture, while under the pressure of so
many other responsibilities, is not something I envy.  We should be glad
Andrei is willing to shoulder this burden, since otherwise D would not
be where it is today.


> In DConf 2016 Andrei literally said "I'm in charge of too many things.
> Please get me fired!" [1]. Sadly, it doesn't seem like much firing has
> happened since then. :-(
[...]

It has, to some extent. But the fundamental problem remains that more
manpower is needed so that he can be freed up to do the more important
things.  Having to personally review all new public symbols added to
Phobos, for example, just doesn't seem scalable in the long run.  But,
as Andrei himself said, the last time he left that decision to somebody
else, there was a noticeable deterioration in the quality of code in
Phobos.  So we need not only more manpower, but also more *trusted*
manpower; people who share the same views as Andrei, whom he can trust
to make the right decisions without his intervention.


T

-- 
"Maybe" is a strange word.  When mom or dad says it it means "yes", but when my 
big brothers say it it means "no"! -- PJ jr.

Re: Quora: Why hasn't D started to replace C++?

[Mark via Digitalmars-d]

On Wednesday, 31 January 2018 at 23:38:22 UTC, H. S. Teoh wrote:
And IIRC, Andrei had already bought into the ddox system by 
then (the process of merging it might have already begun, I'm 
not 100% certain), so dpldocs was already starting from a 
disadvantaged position, whatever merits it may have on its own.
 And I'll be frank that sometimes Andrei can take some effort 
to convince, and it takes a certain amount of dogged 
persistence (and thick-skin) to get through to him sometimes. 
And it doesn't help that he has so much on his plate, and 
generally doesn't have enough time to dedicate to all the 
decisions waiting upon him to make, so sometimes it can be 
frustrating trying to get through to him.


T


In DConf 2016 Andrei literally said "I'm in charge of too many 
things. Please get me fired!" [1]. Sadly, it doesn't seem like 
much firing has happened since then. :-(



[1] 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4oDK91E3VKs=youtu.be=9m42s

Re: Quora: Why hasn't D started to replace C++?

[Russel Winder via Digitalmars-d]

On Thu, 2018-02-01 at 19:28 +, John Gabriele via Digitalmars-d
wrote:
> On Thursday, 1 February 2018 at 03:00:07 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:
> > On 1/31/2018 5:58 PM, H. S. Teoh wrote:
> > > cosmetic features.
> > 
> > I tough lesson I've learned is that cosmetics matter, a lot. 
> > Sometimes much more than substance. There's no getting away 
> > from it.

I agree but only if s/Markdown/AsciiDoctor/g

> This is one reason I recommend markdown for docs. Cosmetics is 
> what markdown does best. People *like* looking at it and editing 
> it. It's like typing an email or a forum comment.
> 
> Other reasons I recommend it are:
> 
>* everyone already knows it (it's at github, stackoverflow, and 
> reddit),
> 
>* it's fairly easy to write (as easy as possible while still 
> looking good),
> 
>* there's an open spec (CommonMark), and
> 
>* writing new language-specific markup formats appears to be 
> something that's not done anymore. There's javadoc, texinfo, 
> doxygen, docbook, groff --- all very ... *mature* technologies. 
> In modern projects: Rust uses markdown, Python uses reST, Git 
> uses asciidoc --- all general-purpose non- language-specific 
> lightweight markup formats.
> 
> The only reason I can think of for *not* using markdown for 
> project docs is if your project is another competing lightweight 
> markup format.

Markdown was created to write a few HTML pages. AsciiDoc (and thus
AsciiDoctor) was invented to be a front end to the DocBook/XML
toolchain.

Thus Markdown is for a few small very simple webpages, AsciiDoctor is
for creating any form of document from a page to a book. They are
similar where Markdown has functionality, but AsciiDoctor has so much
more, and most people end up finding they want all the extras. XeLaTeX
and Sphinx/ReStructuredText are the competition for AsciiDoctor.
Markdown is lacking in functionality people will find they need to use.


-- 
Russel.
===
Dr Russel Winder  t: +44 20 7585 2200
41 Buckmaster Roadm: +44 7770 465 077
London SW11 1EN, UK   w: www.russel.org.uk


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Re: Quora: Why hasn't D started to replace C++?

[Russel Winder via Digitalmars-d]

On Thu, 2018-02-01 at 19:41 +, John Gabriele via Digitalmars-d
wrote:
> 
[…]
> It's trivial to put multiple markdown files together into a large 
> doc, if that's desired. Just put a bunch of .md files together 
> into the same directory and run your markdown processor on them. 
> They can link to each other in the [normal 
> way](./other-file.html#normal-way).

Auto generation of contents pages, and indexes? Tables? Nested lists?
The CommonMark crib sheet says nothing. AsciiDoctor has all of them,
though I prefer XeLaTeX.  

> Markdown provides a simple, practical, modern, and commonly-known 
> way to get docs written fast and by anyone who wants to pop in 
> and improve them. There's no easier way to write plain text docs 
> that look as good.

AsciiDoctor.

> Sorry, can't recall if I already mentioned this, but D suffers 
> from a perception that it's "old", or "the language that tried 
> and failed to replace C++". Something simple like markdown for 
> its docs sends a clear message that D is modern and knows when to 
> pivot to new and better ways after the old ways are not serving 
> it anymore.

Markdown is so last decade. Ditto AsciiDoctor. XeLateX so last
millenium. The question is choosing the right tool for the job, not
pandering to hipster fashionistas. Clearly one reviews new ways and
moves to them if that provides a better way forward, but the goal is
more important that the technology.

There are the autogenerated reference pages. JavaDoc, Doxygen, all have
their upside and downside. D has DDOC, is it fit for purpose? Should it
be replaced (by Doxygen) or evolved? Maybe Markdown fits here, but
without table support you end up hacking stuff. cf. vast tracts of
early JavaDoc stuff.

For the documents no created by scanning the source code, you want
something like Markdown, AsciiDoc, ReStructuredText, XeLaTeX. I think
Sphinx/ReStructuredText actually can do both from code generated
reference and other documents – it does for many projects as well as
Python.

I happen to rate AsciiDoc far better than Markdown as a lightweight
text markup, though actually I prefer XeLaTeX. However, simply trading
emails about "I think X is best" is not going to get anyone anywhere.
Only when someone actually does something is there movement forward. So
unless some actually creates a demo of the
(Markdown|AsciiDoctor|XeLaTeX) system nothing will change. Of course if
Walter and/or Andrei don't like it, it will be wasted effort.

> Incidentally, choosing an established standard like markdown is a 
> good way to short-circuit bikeshedding about "it what ways should 
> ddoc be updated to include some markdown features?". Just pick 
> standard CommonMark markdown and you're done.

s/Markdown/AsciiDoctor/g

> One last note and I'll (try to!) stop: it's difficult enough to 
> get good writers to help with docs. Much more so when they've got 
> to first learn your own language-specific markup (which is only 
> useful with your project).

This is a good and strong point, that has been raised in many other
places I frequent. One group changed from their custom DocBook/XML to
Sphinx because someone did stuff rather than talking about it.
AsciiDoctor would clearly have been a better solution, evolution using
the DocBook toolchain, but they went for the revolution because people
put effort into it to make the decision happen.

The core point is how are you going to get pull requests from people to
update and evolve the documentation. An esoteric, indeed unique, markup
language is clearly the wrong choice.


-- 
Russel.
===
Dr Russel Winder  t: +44 20 7585 2200
41 Buckmaster Roadm: +44 7770 465 077
London SW11 1EN, UK   w: www.russel.org.uk


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Re: Quora: Why hasn't D started to replace C++?

[Russel Winder via Digitalmars-d]

On Thu, 2018-02-01 at 17:25 +, Benny via Digitalmars-d wrote:
> On Thursday, 1 February 2018 at 15:47:50 UTC, Russel Winder wrote:
> > For me:
> > 
> > aptitude install ldc
> > aptitude install gdc
> > aptitude install dmd-bin
> > aptitude install dub
> > 
> > Seems to work fine, and no conflicts.
> > 
> > […]
> 
> Please try Windows and then come back ;)

Uuurrr… no. Those people who choose to use a system such as Windows,
for which no-one is providing packaging, have a responsibility to:

a) raise the problems; and

b) help fix raised problems.


-- 
Russel.
===
Dr Russel Winder  t: +44 20 7585 2200
41 Buckmaster Roadm: +44 7770 465 077
London SW11 1EN, UK   w: www.russel.org.uk


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Re: Quora: Why hasn't D started to replace C++?

[Russel Winder via Digitalmars-d]

On Thu, 2018-02-01 at 08:17 -0800, H. S. Teoh via Digitalmars-d wrote:
> On Thu, Feb 01, 2018 at 03:47:50PM +, Russel Winder via
> Digitalmars-d wrote:
> > 
[…]
> > For me:
> > 
> > aptitude install ldc
> > aptitude install gdc
> > aptitude install dmd-bin
> > aptitude install dub
> > 
> > Seems to work fine, and no conflicts.
> 
> [...]
> 
> Only because the OS has a sane packaging system (and some people were
> kind enough to package the compilers in nice packages). For
> less-privileged OSes, the user experience could be drastically
> different. ;-)

I see two obvious inferences:

a) use a platform with a good packaging system, and good packaging
team.

b) if you cannot use a such a system, raise the problem and then get
involved in fixing it.

-- 
Russel.
===
Dr Russel Winder  t: +44 20 7585 2200
41 Buckmaster Roadm: +44 7770 465 077
London SW11 1EN, UK   w: www.russel.org.uk


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Re: Quora: Why hasn't D started to replace C++?

[Martin Tschierschke via Digitalmars-d]

On Friday, 2 February 2018 at 08:39:58 UTC, Paolo Invernizzi 
wrote:

On Friday, 2 February 2018 at 08:21:33 UTC, Martin Tschierschke

[...]
Maybe there should be a blog post, with some kind of status 
report every .. weeks or .. month? Telling more about the 
focus of the D foundation, statistics of downloads, number of 
fixed bugs, partly similar to Adams week in D but more 
official. I think the content of such a post may find its way 
into more mainstream IT magazines, if marked as official d 
foundation  press release even more.


The best status report I've met is definitely the FreeBSD 
quarterly status report:


https://www.freebsd.org/news/status/status.html

I suggest to take a look at that, as an inspiration and 
yes, a quarterly report is enough.


/Paolo

Yes, looks very good!

Re: Quora: Why hasn't D started to replace C++?

[Paolo Invernizzi via Digitalmars-d]

On Friday, 2 February 2018 at 08:21:33 UTC, Martin Tschierschke 
wrote:
On Thursday, 1 February 2018 at 22:38:36 UTC, Walter Bright 
wrote:

On 2/1/2018 3:11 AM, Martin Tschierschke wrote:
Idea: There should be some kind of news ticker for all 
enhancements and important decisions, maybe at first just via 
twitter  with a special #tag  beside #dlang where all updates 
are announced. And a place on the homepage, where this feed 
is displayed separately.


It's already there on the right side of https://dlang.org/



with a special #tag  beside #dlang
The focus was on a feed with _two_ tags #dlang and #dfoundation 
for example.


In the feed on the homepage everything is mixed up and I am 
feeling a lot information about progress - made in the 
background - is missing.


Maybe there should be a blog post, with some kind of status 
report every .. weeks or .. month? Telling more about the focus 
of the D foundation, statistics of downloads, number of fixed 
bugs, partly similar to Adams week in D but more official. I 
think the content of such a post may find its way into more 
mainstream IT magazines, if marked as official d foundation  
press release even more.


The best status report I've met is definitely the FreeBSD 
quarterly status report:


https://www.freebsd.org/news/status/status.html

I suggest to take a look at that, as an inspiration and yes, 
a quarterly report is enough.


/Paolo

Re: Quora: Why hasn't D started to replace C++?

[Martin Tschierschke via Digitalmars-d]

On Thursday, 1 February 2018 at 22:38:36 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:

On 2/1/2018 3:11 AM, Martin Tschierschke wrote:
Idea: There should be some kind of news ticker for all 
enhancements and important decisions, maybe at first just via 
twitter  with a special #tag  beside #dlang where all updates 
are announced. And a place on the homepage, where this feed is 
displayed separately.


It's already there on the right side of https://dlang.org/



with a special #tag  beside #dlang
The focus was on a feed with _two_ tags #dlang and #dfoundation 
for example.


In the feed on the homepage everything is mixed up and I am 
feeling a lot information about progress - made in the background 
- is missing.


Maybe there should be a blog post, with some kind of status 
report every .. weeks or .. month? Telling more about the focus 
of the D foundation, statistics of downloads, number of fixed 
bugs, partly similar to Adams week in D but more official. I 
think the content of such a post may find its way into more 
mainstream IT magazines, if marked as official d foundation  
press release even more.

Re: Quora: Why hasn't D started to replace C++?

[Nerve via Digitalmars-d]

On Thursday, 1 February 2018 at 15:27:02 UTC, Benny wrote:

Suggestion:

Is it maybe not better to have one "front-end" compiler visible 
that people download


Example:

D run main.d
D run main.d --compiler ldc ( not installed? Auto download and 
compile using dub )

D run main.d --compiler ldc --options -o3
D run main.d --compiler gdc ( not installed? Auto ...)

D package install web-d

Seen this layout with a some other compilers where everything 
is clean integrated.


- Compiler ( default )
-- Run
-- Test

- Package
-- Install
-- Remove
-- Update

- Tools
--- Format
--- Check
- Language server?

No dub, no ldc, gdc, no confusion, just one clean interface. 
What happens behind the interface is nobody there business. It 
just presents better.


Dub already does half this work with the compiler option but 
its a package manager not the "face of D". Hard to explain...


Anyway, too much off-topic?


DUB can fill this role quite well. What it needs is clearer 
documentation on how to switch compilers. Better yet, outright 
compiler switches from the command line to designate a compiler, 
compile debug code, or run unittest code.



On another note, I do want to put in my two cents about this 
controversial thread, and the continuing GC threads that pop up. 
People that use D find it highly productive and performant in 
their domains. C and C++ programmers, ostensibly the target 
audience of D, continue to reject GC as some kind of albatross 
they'll never get over.


dlang.org needs front-page, clear as day examples of the speed 
benefits of optimized D code. Show that there is minimal or no 
impact from the GC is most modern use cases (i.e. within 
components of a web framework, within a database, within a 
desktop application). Compare performance of real solutions. And, 
if it can be done, show how maximally performant embedded code 
with no GC can be run on constrained real-time hardware with a 
significant gain in code readability.


tl;dr EXAMPLES EXAMPLES EXAMPLES

SHOW the world why the GC is not only not a big deal, but a good 
thing, and STOP trying to TELL them by playing defense in 
discussion threads around the Internet.

Re: Quora: Why hasn't D started to replace C++?

[psychoticRabbit via Digitalmars-d]

On Friday, 2 February 2018 at 02:25:47 UTC, Arun Chandrasekaran 
wrote:
On Friday, 2 February 2018 at 02:15:55 UTC, psychoticRabbit 
wrote:

On Thursday, 1 February 2018 at 17:13:52 UTC, Seb wrote:


curl https://i.dlang.io/install.sh | bash -s dmd


Yeah..let's all run an untrusted shell script (with unknown 
contents), right off the web.


Will people never learn?


Relax and take a break. You can still download the script, 
review and then run it as required.


Yeah...it's not like I'm unfamiliar with that concept ;-)

But many (perhaps most) are not.

btw. Oh.. and I do hope that debian/apache webserver they use 
cannot be hacked... cause I've heard you can do some interesting 
stuff on people systems with shell scripts ;-)

Re: Quora: Why hasn't D started to replace C++?

[Seb via Digitalmars-d]

On Friday, 2 February 2018 at 02:25:47 UTC, Arun Chandrasekaran 
wrote:
On Friday, 2 February 2018 at 02:15:55 UTC, psychoticRabbit 
wrote:

On Thursday, 1 February 2018 at 17:13:52 UTC, Seb wrote:


curl https://i.dlang.io/install.sh | bash -s dmd


Yeah..let's all run an untrusted shell script (with unknown 
contents), right off the web.


Will people never learn?


Relax and take a break. You can still download the script, 
review and then run it as required.


First I had a typo there - it should have been


curl https://dlang.io/install.sh | bash -s dmd


(I type to much text on my tiny phone screen these days).

Apart from as Arun correctly pointed out, going the two step 
route of doing your audit locally:


---
wget https://dlang.io/install.sh
vi install.sh # do your audit
bash install.sh
---

Also:

- note that install.sh will download the official D keyring 
(https://dlang.org/gpg_keys.html), with which all binaries + the 
script itself are signed, s.t. it can verify binaries + updates 
to the script.


- it's a fairly common practice, e.g. https://www.rustup.rs

Re: Quora: Why hasn't D started to replace C++?

[Seb via Digitalmars-d]

On Friday, 2 February 2018 at 02:33:30 UTC, rjframe wrote:

On Fri, 02 Feb 2018 01:42:08 +, Meta wrote:


On Wednesday, 31 January 2018 at 11:42:14 UTC, Seb wrote:

Yes, obviously the current situation isn't ideal, but it's 
not too bad
either and we have found one good, but probably not so 
well-known yet

way to tackle this: the dlang-community organization on GH
(https://github.com/dlang-community).
A lot of important, but more or less abandoned repositories 
have been
adopted, s.t. there's a common place to submit bug fixes and 
feature
PRs and its ensured by CIs that they are always in a good 
state, e.g.

always compile with the latest DMD.


Wait, have libdparse et al. been abandoned? What happened to 
Brian?


I don't think the intended interpretation is that all projects 
there were abandoned; many projects important to the D 
ecosystem have been moved there, which includes some 
otherwise-abandoned projects.


Yes, sorry for the poor wording of less abandoned". I picked it 
for Brian's project because it used to take ~1-2 months for a 
simple bug fix to get in. Now it can be merged within a day.
No worries, Brian is still developing his tools (e.g. 
https://github.com/dlang-community/dfmt/pull/318), but other 
people do more active development on/with his awesome libs at 
"upstream".

Re: Quora: Why hasn't D started to replace C++?

[rjframe via Digitalmars-d]

On Fri, 02 Feb 2018 01:42:08 +, Meta wrote:

> On Wednesday, 31 January 2018 at 11:42:14 UTC, Seb wrote:
> 
>> Yes, obviously the current situation isn't ideal, but it's not too bad
>> either and we have found one good, but probably not so well-known yet
>> way to tackle this: the dlang-community organization on GH
>> (https://github.com/dlang-community).
>> A lot of important, but more or less abandoned repositories have been
>> adopted, s.t. there's a common place to submit bug fixes and feature
>> PRs and its ensured by CIs that they are always in a good state, e.g.
>> always compile with the latest DMD.
> 
> Wait, have libdparse et al. been abandoned? What happened to Brian?

I don't think the intended interpretation is that all projects there were 
abandoned; many projects important to the D ecosystem have been moved 
there, which includes some otherwise-abandoned projects.

Re: Quora: Why hasn't D started to replace C++?

[Arun Chandrasekaran via Digitalmars-d]

On Friday, 2 February 2018 at 02:15:55 UTC, psychoticRabbit wrote:

On Thursday, 1 February 2018 at 17:13:52 UTC, Seb wrote:


curl https://i.dlang.io/install.sh | bash -s dmd


Yeah..let's all run an untrusted shell script (with unknown 
contents), right off the web.


Will people never learn?


Relax and take a break. You can still download the script, review 
and then run it as required.

Re: Quora: Why hasn't D started to replace C++?

[psychoticRabbit via Digitalmars-d]

On Thursday, 1 February 2018 at 17:13:52 UTC, Seb wrote:


curl https://i.dlang.io/install.sh | bash -s dmd


Yeah..let's all run an untrusted shell script (with unknown 
contents), right off the web.


Will people never learn?

Re: Quora: Why hasn't D started to replace C++?

[Meta via Digitalmars-d]

On Wednesday, 31 January 2018 at 11:42:14 UTC, Seb wrote:

Yes, obviously the current situation isn't ideal, but it's not 
too bad either and we have found one good, but probably not so 
well-known yet way to tackle this: the dlang-community 
organization on GH (https://github.com/dlang-community).
A lot of important, but more or less abandoned repositories 
have been adopted, s.t. there's a common place to submit bug 
fixes and feature PRs and its ensured by CIs that they are 
always in a good state, e.g. always compile with the latest DMD.


Wait, have libdparse et al. been abandoned? What happened to 
Brian?

Re: Quora: Why hasn't D started to replace C++?

[Andrei Alexandrescu via Digitalmars-d]

On 01/31/2018 06:38 PM, H. S. Teoh wrote:

And I'll be frank that sometimes Andrei
can take some effort to convince, and it takes a certain amount of
dogged persistence (and thick-skin) to get through to him sometimes.
And it doesn't help that he has so much on his plate, and generally
doesn't have enough time to dedicate to all the decisions waiting upon
him to make, so sometimes it can be frustrating trying to get through to
him.


Thanks for the critique. I'm trying to get better organized at being 
less of a bottleneck every day.


Regarding the documentation system, at a high level it's clear that 
working to improve the established solutions is often a sensible and 
productive way to go about things. This is not core language so we have 
no important backward compatibility issues.


A distinct documentation system seeking to replace the existent ones 
would need to present a strong motivation. I would be hard pressed to 
recall that we were presented with a good case that we rejected without 
due consideration.



Andrei

Re: Quora: Why hasn't D started to replace C++?

[Walter Bright via Digitalmars-d]

On 2/1/2018 3:11 AM, Martin Tschierschke wrote:
Idea: There should be some kind of news ticker for all enhancements and 
important decisions, maybe at first just via twitter  with a special #tag  
beside #dlang where all updates are announced. And a place on the homepage, 
where this feed is displayed separately.


It's already there on the right side of https://dlang.org/

Re: Quora: Why hasn't D started to replace C++?

[John Gabriele via Digitalmars-d]

On Thursday, 1 February 2018 at 11:06:09 UTC, Russel Winder wrote:
On Wed, 2018-01-31 at 16:13 +, John Gabriele via 
Digitalmars-d wrote:

[…]
this older language from times past, before C++11, and using 
ddoc
for docs instead of markdown contributes to this perception. 
Let
me know if you'd like help in translating D website and doc 
pages

from ddoc to markdown.


I am sure Markdown is find for single page HTML pages, but for 
bigger documents that need to render to HTML or PDF (or other 
e-publishing formats) surely AsciiDoctor and XeLaTeX are the 
only choices.


It's trivial to put multiple markdown files together into a large 
doc, if that's desired. Just put a bunch of .md files together 
into the same directory and run your markdown processor on them. 
They can link to each other in the [normal 
way](./other-file.html#normal-way).


Markdown provides a simple, practical, modern, and commonly-known 
way to get docs written fast and by anyone who wants to pop in 
and improve them. There's no easier way to write plain text docs 
that look as good.


Sorry, can't recall if I already mentioned this, but D suffers 
from a perception that it's "old", or "the language that tried 
and failed to replace C++". Something simple like markdown for 
its docs sends a clear message that D is modern and knows when to 
pivot to new and better ways after the old ways are not serving 
it anymore.


Incidentally, choosing an established standard like markdown is a 
good way to short-circuit bikeshedding about "it what ways should 
ddoc be updated to include some markdown features?". Just pick 
standard CommonMark markdown and you're done.


One last note and I'll (try to!) stop: it's difficult enough to 
get good writers to help with docs. Much more so when they've got 
to first learn your own language-specific markup (which is only 
useful with your project).

Re: Quora: Why hasn't D started to replace C++?

[John Gabriele via Digitalmars-d]

On Thursday, 1 February 2018 at 03:00:07 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:

On 1/31/2018 5:58 PM, H. S. Teoh wrote:

cosmetic features.


I tough lesson I've learned is that cosmetics matter, a lot. 
Sometimes much more than substance. There's no getting away 
from it.


This is one reason I recommend markdown for docs. Cosmetics is 
what markdown does best. People *like* looking at it and editing 
it. It's like typing an email or a forum comment.


Other reasons I recommend it are:

  * everyone already knows it (it's at github, stackoverflow, and 
reddit),


  * it's fairly easy to write (as easy as possible while still 
looking good),


  * there's an open spec (CommonMark), and

  * writing new language-specific markup formats appears to be 
something that's not done anymore. There's javadoc, texinfo, 
doxygen, docbook, groff --- all very ... *mature* technologies. 
In modern projects: Rust uses markdown, Python uses reST, Git 
uses asciidoc --- all general-purpose non- language-specific 
lightweight markup formats.


The only reason I can think of for *not* using markdown for 
project docs is if your project is another competing lightweight 
markup format.

Re: Quora: Why hasn't D started to replace C++?

[Benny via Digitalmars-d]

On Thursday, 1 February 2018 at 15:47:50 UTC, Russel Winder wrote:

For me:

aptitude install ldc
aptitude install gdc
aptitude install dmd-bin
aptitude install dub

Seems to work fine, and no conflicts.

[…]


Please try Windows and then come back ;)

Re: Quora: Why hasn't D started to replace C++?

[Seb via Digitalmars-d]

On Thursday, 1 February 2018 at 16:17:45 UTC, H. S. Teoh wrote:
On Thu, Feb 01, 2018 at 03:47:50PM +, Russel Winder via 
Digitalmars-d wrote:
On Thu, 2018-02-01 at 15:27 +, Benny via Digitalmars-d 
wrote:
> 
[…]
> Nothing wrong with choice as long as that choice does not 
> introduces issues. Currently there are 3 compilers but also 
> 3 different ways to install ( depending on the platform ). 
> DMD has a installer, LDC needs a manual copy job + path 
> creation, GDC did not even bother with ( sorry ).


For me:

aptitude install ldc
aptitude install gdc
aptitude install dmd-bin
aptitude install dub

Seems to work fine, and no conflicts.

[...]

Only because the OS has a sane packaging system (and some 
people were kind enough to package the compilers in nice 
packages). For less-privileged OSes, the user experience could 
be drastically different. ;-)



T


curl https://i.dlang.io/install.sh | bash -s dmd
~/dlang/install.sh ldc
~/dlang/install.sh gdc

Works on all Posix systems
Now to use LDC as default:

. ~/dlang/install.sh -a ldc


Didn't we have this discussion yesterday already?
See also: https://dlang.org/install.html

Re: Quora: Why hasn't D started to replace C++?

[H. S. Teoh via Digitalmars-d]

On Thu, Feb 01, 2018 at 03:47:50PM +, Russel Winder via Digitalmars-d wrote:
> On Thu, 2018-02-01 at 15:27 +, Benny via Digitalmars-d wrote:
> > 
> […]
> > Nothing wrong with choice as long as that choice does not 
> > introduces issues. Currently there are 3 compilers but also 3 
> > different ways to install ( depending on the platform ). DMD has 
> > a installer, LDC needs a manual copy job + path creation, GDC did 
> > not even bother with ( sorry ).
> 
> For me:
> 
> aptitude install ldc
> aptitude install gdc
> aptitude install dmd-bin
> aptitude install dub
> 
> Seems to work fine, and no conflicts.
[...]

Only because the OS has a sane packaging system (and some people were
kind enough to package the compilers in nice packages). For
less-privileged OSes, the user experience could be drastically
different. ;-)


T

-- 
Prosperity breeds contempt, and poverty breeds consent. -- Suck.com

Re: Quora: Why hasn't D started to replace C++?

[Russel Winder via Digitalmars-d]

On Thu, 2018-02-01 at 15:27 +, Benny via Digitalmars-d wrote:
> 
[…]
> Nothing wrong with choice as long as that choice does not 
> introduces issues. Currently there are 3 compilers but also 3 
> different ways to install ( depending on the platform ). DMD has 
> a installer, LDC needs a manual copy job + path creation, GDC did 
> not even bother with ( sorry ).

For me:

aptitude install ldc
aptitude install gdc
aptitude install dmd-bin
aptitude install dub

Seems to work fine, and no conflicts.

[…]
-- 
Russel.
===
Dr Russel Winder  t: +44 20 7585 2200
41 Buckmaster Roadm: +44 7770 465 077
London SW11 1EN, UK   w: www.russel.org.uk


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Re: Quora: Why hasn't D started to replace C++?

[Benny via Digitalmars-d]

On Thursday, 1 February 2018 at 11:21:37 UTC, Russel Winder wrote:
D should be proud of having a reference compiler, a GCC-based 
one, and an LLVM-based one. This is a Good Thing™, let no-one 
undermine this.


Nothing wrong with choice as long as that choice does not 
introduces issues. Currently there are 3 compilers but also 3 
different ways to install ( depending on the platform ). DMD has 
a installer, LDC needs a manual copy job + path creation, GDC did 
not even bother with ( sorry ).


Let alone 'conflicts':

Example: Install DMD ( what has its own DUB ) but also install 
LDC ( what has its own DUB), now lets say both version have 
different dub versions. Yes, this happened to me and it 
conflicted with some of the Editor plugins their build process 
because the wrong "version" of dub got selected during the build 
process. Its not really a bug but a issue that can trip people ( 
lost a hour on that one ).


Other issues can be that it makes conversations difficult. When 
new people read DMD, LDC, GDC in these forums, you can just as 
well be speaking Mandarin ( Chinese ).


Suggestion:

Is it maybe not better to have one "front-end" compiler visible 
that people download


Example:

D run main.d
D run main.d --compiler ldc ( not installed? Auto download and 
compile using dub )

D run main.d --compiler ldc --options -o3
D run main.d --compiler gdc ( not installed? Auto ...)

D package install web-d

Seen this layout with a some other compilers where everything is 
clean integrated.


- Compiler ( default )
-- Run
-- Test

- Package
-- Install
-- Remove
-- Update

- Tools
--- Format
--- Check
- Language server?

No dub, no ldc, gdc, no confusion, just one clean interface. What 
happens behind the interface is nobody there business. It just 
presents better.


Dub already does half this work with the compiler option but its 
a package manager not the "face of D". Hard to explain...


Anyway, too much off-topic?

Re: Quora: Why hasn't D started to replace C++?

[Russel Winder via Digitalmars-d]

On Thu, 2018-02-01 at 12:55 +, Nicholas Wilson via Digitalmars-d
wrote:
> […]
> 
> OK, will do. Might need to work on getting some more content to 
> fill out the time but should be doable. Hopefully by then 
> DCompute will support Vulkan, assuming that I can get consensus 
> to get Vulkan as part of the SPIR-V backend for LLVM.

Excellent. ACCU 90 minute sessions are intended as 60 mins presentation
+ 30 mins Q However many presenters go for the more interactive
approach of dealing with points as they arise. The more interactive
sessions go down very well.

The alternative is a 90 minute workshop where people come and do stuff.
Many presenters structure them as 20 mins intro and 60 mins of writing
software or doing some activity in groups and 10 mins of sharing
experiences. These go down well. For a really deep dive, there is the
"long workshop" which is 180 mins. However the last few of these we had
didn't work too well, the workshop lost too many people at the 90 min
break.

-- 
Russel.
===
Dr Russel Winder  t: +44 20 7585 2200
41 Buckmaster Roadm: +44 7770 465 077
London SW11 1EN, UK   w: www.russel.org.uk


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Re: Quora: Why hasn't D started to replace C++?

[Seb via Digitalmars-d]

On Thursday, 1 February 2018 at 11:40:32 UTC, rjframe wrote:

On Thu, 01 Feb 2018 11:11:20 +, Martin Tschierschke wrote:


Idea: There should be some kind of news ticker for all 
enhancements and important decisions, maybe at first just via 
twitter  with a special #tag  beside #dlang where all updates 
are announced. And a place on the homepage, where this feed is 
displayed separately.


The announce forum gets most things; if you're not reading it 
you'll want to (between that and the changelog for the compiler 
and library, that's most activity). A twitter bot to pull all 
announce posts from core committers might not be a bad idea.


Shouldn't be too hard: 
https://github.com/CyberShadow/DFeed/issues/97

Re: Quora: Why hasn't D started to replace C++?

[Mike Parker via Digitalmars-d]

On Thursday, 1 February 2018 at 12:04:11 UTC, bachmeier wrote:

I had hoped the blog would be used for that purpose. Obviously 
it is not.


And it won't be. I had vaguely imagined using it for semi-regular 
news updates from the core D team, but I realized early on that 
isn't going to pan out.


From what I've seen, the D Language Twitter account mostly 
tweets to announce new blog posts.


Stepping up twitter usage is one of  my priorities for this year. 
The blog tweets are automated every time I publish a new blog 
post. I'm slowly increasing my twitter time investment, 
responding and retweeting #dlang tweets when it fits.


I plan to start tweeting out smaller news items there that aren't 
big enough for blog posts. I'll keep an eye on the forums for 
news, and cast a net outside the core community now and again.


I encourage anyone who sees something they think @D_Programming 
should tweet out to email me and let me know. Or tweet about it 
with #dlang. I'm scanning Twitter every couple of days right now.


I also have an announcement coming on the blog very soon 
regarding using Twitter to fix bugs.

Re: Quora: Why hasn't D started to replace C++?

[Nicholas Wilson via Digitalmars-d]

On Thursday, 1 February 2018 at 12:22:56 UTC, Russel Winder wrote:
On Thu, 2018-02-01 at 12:06 +, Nicholas Wilson via 
Digitalmars-d wrote:



[…]
Indeed, I will be giving a talk at IWOCL (an OpenCL 
conference) a week after DConf, promoting DCompute to the 
numerics folk.


Please send this in to ACCU 2019 during the CfP 2018-10-?? to 
2018-11- ?? as a 90 minute full session. If the committee do 
not like the proposal, I will override their faulty decision.


(We have a (small but vocal) group of games people at ACCU who 
think

C++ is the one true way of doing fast computations.)


OK, will do. Might need to work on getting some more content to 
fill out the time but should be doable. Hopefully by then 
DCompute will support Vulkan, assuming that I can get consensus 
to get Vulkan as part of the SPIR-V backend for LLVM.

Re: Quora: Why hasn't D started to replace C++?

[Russel Winder via Digitalmars-d]

On Thu, 2018-02-01 at 12:06 +, Nicholas Wilson via Digitalmars-d
wrote:
> 
[…]
> Indeed, I will be giving a talk at IWOCL (an OpenCL conference) a 
> week after DConf, promoting DCompute to the numerics folk.

Please send this in to ACCU 2019 during the CfP 2018-10-?? to 2018-11-
?? as a 90 minute full session. If the committee do not like the
proposal, I will override their faulty decision.

(We have a (small but vocal) group of games people at ACCU who think
C++ is the one true way of doing fast computations.)
  
-- 
Russel.
===
Dr Russel Winder  t: +44 20 7585 2200
41 Buckmaster Roadm: +44 7770 465 077
London SW11 1EN, UK   w: www.russel.org.uk


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Re: Quora: Why hasn't D started to replace C++?

[Nicholas Wilson via Digitalmars-d]

On Thursday, 1 February 2018 at 12:03:43 UTC, Russel Winder wrote:
On Thu, 2018-02-01 at 11:49 +, Nicholas Wilson via 
Digitalmars-d wrote:

[…]

Ali gave a keynote at C++Now(?) last year(?).


I think it was. What is needed though is follow ups. ACCU, 
C++Now, etc. all need a steady trickle of sessions.


Indeed, I will be giving a talk at IWOCL (an OpenCL conference) a 
week after DConf, promoting DCompute to the numerics folk.

Re: Quora: Why hasn't D started to replace C++?

[bachmeier via Digitalmars-d]

On Thursday, 1 February 2018 at 11:11:20 UTC, Martin Tschierschke 
wrote:
Idea: There should be some kind of news ticker for all 
enhancements and important decisions, maybe at first just via 
twitter  with a special #tag  beside #dlang where all updates 
are announced. And a place on the homepage, where this feed is 
displayed separately.


I had hoped the blog would be used for that purpose. Obviously it 
is not. From what I've seen, the D Language Twitter account 
mostly tweets to announce new blog posts. The subreddit is 
another place these announcements could go, but that seems to get 
little attention as well. The view seems to be that there should 
only be announcements of the really big stuff. My opinion is that 
it's better to err on the side of too many announcements rather 
than too few.

Re: Quora: Why hasn't D started to replace C++?

[Russel Winder via Digitalmars-d]

On Thu, 2018-02-01 at 11:49 +, Nicholas Wilson via Digitalmars-d
wrote:
> […]
> 
> Ali gave a keynote at C++Now(?) last year(?).

I think it was. What is needed though is follow ups. ACCU, C++Now, etc.
all need a steady trickle of sessions.

-- 
Russel.
===
Dr Russel Winder  t: +44 20 7585 2200
41 Buckmaster Roadm: +44 7770 465 077
London SW11 1EN, UK   w: www.russel.org.uk


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Re: Quora: Why hasn't D started to replace C++?

[Nicholas Wilson via Digitalmars-d]

On Thursday, 1 February 2018 at 11:20:00 UTC, Russel Winder wrote:
On Wed, 2018-01-31 at 13:14 +, Michael via Digitalmars-d 
wrote:



[…]
I agree that marketing is a pretty serious problem for D. Many 
people just aren't aware of it. Even for people who do not […]


Some suggestions:

More people putting more good projects using D on GitLab, 
BitBucket, Launchpad, and GitHub.


People writing more articles using D in publications such as 
CVu and Overload, etc.


People putting more sessions into conferences such as ACCU 
using D – there hasn't been a single D-related session since 
Andrei's keynote at ACCU 2016.


Ali gave a keynote at C++Now(?) last year(?).

Re: Quora: Why hasn't D started to replace C++?

[rjframe via Digitalmars-d]

On Thu, 01 Feb 2018 11:11:20 +, Martin Tschierschke wrote:


> Idea: There should be some kind of news ticker for all enhancements and
> important decisions, maybe at first just via twitter  with a special
> #tag  beside #dlang where all updates are announced. And a place on the
> homepage, where this feed is displayed separately.

The announce forum gets most things; if you're not reading it you'll want 
to (between that and the changelog for the compiler and library, that's 
most activity). A twitter bot to pull all announce posts from core 
committers might not be a bad idea.

Re: Quora: Why hasn't D started to replace C++?

[Russel Winder via Digitalmars-d]

On Wed, 2018-01-31 at 13:54 +, Jack Stouffer via Digitalmars-d
wrote:
> On Wednesday, 31 January 2018 at 07:56:37 UTC, Andrew Benton 
> wrote:
> > E.g. three compilers
> 
> Every other compiled language (and a lot of scripting ones) uses 
> the fact of multiple compilers for the language as a sign of 
> adoption and ecosystem growth.

Definitely.

> I've only ever seen people complain about D in this area. Never 
> once have I seen someone argue that the existence of PyPy hurts 
> Python or gogcc hurts Go.

D should be proud of having a reference compiler, a GCC-based one, and
an LLVM-based one. This is a Good Thing™, let no-one undermine this.

-- 
Russel.
===
Dr Russel Winder  t: +44 20 7585 2200
41 Buckmaster Roadm: +44 7770 465 077
London SW11 1EN, UK   w: www.russel.org.uk


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Re: Quora: Why hasn't D started to replace C++?

[Russel Winder via Digitalmars-d]

On Wed, 2018-01-31 at 13:14 +, Michael via Digitalmars-d wrote:
> 
[…]
> I agree that marketing is a pretty serious problem for D. Many 
> people just aren't aware of it. Even for people who do not 
> […]

Some suggestions:

More people putting more good projects using D on GitLab, BitBucket,
Launchpad, and GitHub.

People writing more articles using D in publications such as CVu and
Overload, etc.

People putting more sessions into conferences such as ACCU using D –
there hasn't been a single D-related session since Andrei's keynote at
ACCU 2016.

My own small contribution is to answer all the ACCU C++ Code Critiques
with answers that say do not use C++, but use Python, D, Go, Rust, so
as to get more non-C++ into C++ programmers minds. Clearly hardened C++
folk look only to C++ and never consider any language other than
assembly language, but a lot of currently C++ folk are not hardened to
the C++-only mindset. And ACCU is about programming with an emphasis on
C++. This is clearly a great place for D content.

D-only conferences, as (C++|Go|Rust)-only ones, have their place, but
their main role is to reinforce the community. Marketing requires
people to take the message outside the community. ACCU conferences and
journals provide an excellent place to market D to people outside the D
community.   

This year ACCU has some good Rust content. I wanted some Go content but
it seems they are as reluctant to come to a polyglto conference as D
people seem to be. :-(

-- 
Russel.
===
Dr Russel Winder  t: +44 20 7585 2200
41 Buckmaster Roadm: +44 7770 465 077
London SW11 1EN, UK   w: www.russel.org.uk


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Re: Quora: Why hasn't D started to replace C++?

[Martin Tschierschke via Digitalmars-d]

On Wednesday, 31 January 2018 at 18:35:50 UTC, Seb wrote:
[...]
Like: 
https://github.com/adamdruppe/arsd/blob/master/simpledisplay.d

And the examples from D-Lang Tour.

So you only push a button [try D], and get a running 
environment to play around.


Like this?

https://tour.dlang.org/tour/en/dub/mir

It's a small series since today. Any help with filling the 
blank content or new pages is welcome.


See 
https://forum.dlang.org/post/acovehcwaxjykmhek...@forum.dlang.org for adding new libraries to run.dlang.io


This looks very promising!
Have not been on the dang tour page for several month, it shows 
an amazing progress!!


Idea: There should be some kind of news ticker for all 
enhancements and important decisions, maybe at first just via 
twitter  with a special #tag  beside #dlang where all updates are 
announced. And a place on the homepage, where this feed is 
displayed separately.


On the other side a voting mechanism in the forum would be very 
useful, so readers can mark a post as valuable maybe to be be 
displayed in a special feed. I know this is difficult because the 
forum has more than only the web frontend.
But why not translate the [I recommend to read this]-Button into 
a mail or post, with the content ... **recommend** this. And 
probably back? from short mail only with **KEYWORD**.
It would fill up the mailboxes of the readers, but it would be 
easier to count than this "me too ++" posts.

Re: Quora: Why hasn't D started to replace C++?

[Russel Winder via Digitalmars-d]

On Wed, 2018-01-31 at 16:13 +, John Gabriele via Digitalmars-d
wrote:
> […]
> this older language from times past, before C++11, and using ddoc 
> for docs instead of markdown contributes to this perception. Let 
> me know if you'd like help in translating D website and doc pages 
> from ddoc to markdown.

I am sure Markdown is find for single page HTML pages, but for bigger
documents that need to render to HTML or PDF (or other e-publishing
formats) surely AsciiDoctor and XeLaTeX are the only choices.

-- 
Russel.
===
Dr Russel Winder  t: +44 20 7585 2200
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Re: Quora: Why hasn't D started to replace C++?

[Seb via Digitalmars-d]

On Wednesday, 31 January 2018 at 21:19:50 UTC, H. S. Teoh wrote:
On Wed, Jan 31, 2018 at 08:05:37PM +, Adam D. Ruppe via 
Digitalmars-d wrote:

On Wednesday, 31 January 2018 at 19:59:23 UTC, Seb wrote:
> ... and Mike did put _a lot_ of effort in pushing colorful 
> error messages:


Yes, that was a direct result of that forum post I alluded to. 
It isn't something he (or most anyone else, in my experience) 
really cares about, but he felt if he did it then many Walter 
wouldn't waste any more time on it.


In fact, I find the colors distracting.  Pretty? Certainly.  
But helpful?  Not really, at least not for me.  I'd rather 
stick with just B But all things considered, it's a pretty 
minor issue, and one that's not worth the time to complain 
about.  (Haha, and look what I just did. :-P)



T


BTW run.dlang.io supports DMD's colorized error messages since a 
while too, e.g.


https://run.dlang.io/is/neLaOB

If anyone minds, send a PR to 
https://github.com/dlang-tour/core/blob/master/public/static/css/ansi.css

Re: Quora: Why hasn't D started to replace C++?

[Jonathan M Davis via Digitalmars-d]

On Wednesday, January 31, 2018 19:01:46 Walter Bright via Digitalmars-d 
wrote:
> On 1/31/2018 6:14 PM, Jonathan M Davis wrote:
> > I have to wonder if my settings are right. I've never noticed any color
> > in error messages. Messing around with some errors right now, the only
> > color I see is that "Error:" is in red, and some of the text is bolded,
> > so it's white instead of the grey that text is normally on my console.
> > Maybe my console's settings aren't interacting with the color stuff
> > very well.
> Nah, it's just the code in dmd:
>
> if (username == "Jonathan")
> color = off;// muwa-ha-ha-hah!

Clearly, there are downsides to actually knowing the people who work on the
compiler. ;)

- Jonathan M Davis

Re: Quora: Why hasn't D started to replace C++?

[Walter Bright via Digitalmars-d]

On 1/31/2018 3:38 PM, H. S. Teoh wrote:

A "small fry" like myself wouldn't dare
to push the merge button on changes of this kind of magnitude, since it
could have drastic consequences that I can't foresee due to not having a
full grasp of the full scale of what is being changed.

https://youtu.be/amclN9RG49c?t=146

Re: Quora: Why hasn't D started to replace C++?

[Walter Bright via Digitalmars-d]

On 1/31/2018 6:14 PM, Jonathan M Davis wrote:

I have to wonder if my settings are right. I've never noticed any color in
error messages. Messing around with some errors right now, the only color I
see is that "Error:" is in red, and some of the text is bolded, so it's
white instead of the grey that text is normally on my console. Maybe my
console's settings aren't interacting with the color stuff very well.


Nah, it's just the code in dmd:

   if (username == "Jonathan")
   color = off;// muwa-ha-ha-hah!