On Wednesday, 27 July 2016 at 16:26:47 UTC, Seb wrote:
On Tuesday, 26 July 2016 at 15:11:00 UTC, llaine wrote:
Hi guys,
I'm using D since a few month now and I was wondering why
people don't jump onto it that much and why it isn't the "big
thing" already.
Everybody is into javascript nowadays, but IMO even for doing
web I found Vibe.d more interesting and efficient than node.js
for example.
I agree that you have to be pragmatic and choose the right
tools for the right jobs but I would be interested to have
other opinion on thoses questions.
My personal opinion is that the two biggest problems are
1) it has no unique selling point (USP):
Rust - memory-safety, Go/NodeJS - web app, Python/Julia -
scientific computing, R - statistics, Matlab/Mathematica/Octave
- numerical programming, Haskell -
pure functional, C - kernels, controllers, embedded
While the Areas of D Usage
(https://dlang.org/areas-of-d-usage.html) is just a brief
overview, D can compete with all of these areas.
2) It has no big player with money behind it.
Rust (Mozilla), Go (Google), NodeJs (Joyent), ... - having
dedicated resources helps a lot to let a project takeoff.
That being said it's an awesome language that can rule them
all, adoption is rising slowly, but steadily & hopefully with
the D Foundation being a non-profit organization real money
(http://forum.dlang.org/post/qaskprdxmshpabara...@forum.dlang.org) flows in.
I personally don't think having Corp sponsorship will all of
sudden bring more ppl in. I think it would be good to work on
getting libraries to work with vibe might be a good way to bring
interest/development. I know vibe still needs work but the
overall system isn't bad but its still a hassle to use w/ a DB in
some instances. I also don't believe in the "next big thing"
it's hard to compete w/ something like JS and node picked up
mainly because its javascript. If u want D to pick up in the web
arena just start some projects and post about them... Make
youtube videos or whatever. ppl aren't gonna pick it up if all
they do is come to the D forums and see a ton of flame fests.
Need more positive examples of the language... IDK if Rust is
necessarily blowing up in usage I know Go has alot of steam but I
would say that Docker may be the cause more than just saying its
Google. Also what about things like Hadoop or Kafka. If D had
things like this it would also pick up more traction. There is a
strong community and it tends to spend too much time on the
forums complaining about A or B vs. doing things to improve
exposure.
Maybe more organization for community projects would be good.
I'd say one thing that could be improved is organization within
the community. Im not talking about D leadership but just
community.
I've seen a couple jobs around trying to use Elixir w/ Elm on the
front end. There are ppl out there willing to try new things...
