On Sunday, 1 July 2018 at 02:57:26 UTC, RhyS wrote:
On Saturday, 30 June 2018 at 07:11:18 UTC, Joakim wrote:
I'd hope a manager would look at actually meaningful stats
like downloads, rather than just fluffy stats such as "likes":
http://www.somsubhra.com/github-release-stats/?username=crystal-lang&repository=crystal
http://www.somsubhra.com/github-release-stats/?username=ldc-developers&repository=ldc
I see around 9k total downloads of the various Crystal 0.24
and 0.25 versions over the last 8 months, compared to 14k
downloads of the ldc 1.9 compiler alone from two months ago.
Its hard to compare those figure because D and Crystal also use
package installers on the respectable platforms. Going to the
crystal download page makes that very clear. Making tracking
downloads more harder.
D can reach more Git downloads thanks to Windows users that do
not rely on Linux system packages.
D its buginess in between releases also does not help. I
probably downloaded LDC and DMD in the last 9 months a dozen
times, being forced to go back to older versions. Then trying
the new versions, going back. Again and again on Windows.
Downloads do not mean a lot when you can not keep the people. I
can swear that i alone am probably responsible for over 25+
downloads on Windows and dozens on Linux OS. And every time D
loses me after running into issues.
Crystal its 0.24 release is still perfectly working here. I
literally have downloaded 2 version in the last year. 0.23 and
0.24... That is it. No switching between version because of
bugs or package issues or dependency issues. Kind of ironic but
maybe because the http server and other packages are build in
to the core, i have no need for external 3th party solutions
like D's Vibe.d.
Of course, all these stats can be gamed, but I think it'd be
hard to argue Crystal is more popular.
code.d
Total 1336 packages found.
crystalshards.xyz
3359 total shards
Track both sites using archive.org and notice that Crystal is
growing faster in regards to Shards then D its packages.
Duplicates D something like 6 postgresql driver packages.
Crystal has 2 drivers. So D is actually fluffing its numbers
with a lot of not maintained duplicates. Mysql ... Its not hard
to tell that Crystal its Shards community is more active.
Crystal only recently got the funding to get a full time
employees to work on the code base. So one can expect the
development to increase from a mostly community driven
platform. They out gross Nim by almost double on average (
salt.bountysource.com ) and that does not include the 2000$ /
month that "84 codes" directly donates.
I do not know how much D takes in per month. This has always
been a more obscure, as is who are the people that really are
paid full time to work on D. Walter?
Crystal needs a lot of work but so does D. You expect D to have
more its act together for a language this old. No default http
server in this day and age is just really weak sauce. And
Vibe.d breaks plenty of times in between its releases and DMD
releases.
Both have issues but one is under development for 4 year and
the other for 16 years. You expect D to simply outclass Crystal
and other languages. Even Rust is out developing D in many
areas, a lot thanks to a big community.
+1
At the moement, D's default standard library obviously requires a
garbage collector, and this won't change for a while.
Trying to convince developers to use D instead of C++ is often
pointless, because most of the time, if you develop something in
C++ instead of Java/C#/Go/etc, there is a reason for that.
And that reason why they don't use those nice garbage collected
languages is generally the same reason why they won't use D
either.
But those who currently use those same garbage collected
languages (Go/Java/C#/etc) can be convinced to switch to D,
because D's garbage collector won't be probably a problem for
them either, as they are already using one in production.
So what remains a mystery for me is that the D leadership
OBVIOUSLY CAN'T BE CONVINCED that marketing D as a Go/Java/C#
alternative could be much more efficient than marketing D as a
C/C++ alternative.
Why are they trying to sell D on its weakness, instead of selling
it on its strength.
The only thing that D needs to compete on the same ground as Go
and Crystal is to have similar default HTTP-related libraries,
which don't rely on thirdparty libraries for the reasons you just
explained...
Add a 10-liner "Hello World" web server example on the main page
and that's it.
And if they REALLY want to ALSO compete with C++, then I strongly
suggest to add weak and strong references to the syntax (for
instance T& and T@), and provide an alternative standard library
which doesn't require garbage collection at all, like those of
C++ and Rust.
But I think it's quite obvious that the first option (Go-like)
clearly requires less time and efforts than the second (C++-like).