On Friday, 11 July 2014 at 19:56:20 UTC, Chris wrote:
I don't mean to be pessimistic about D's goal of being usable
by all, from scripting to systems, as D may actually be good
enough to get there one day. I just think you're not going to
get there without focusing on taking over a niche at a time,
particularly the niche best suited to D right now, mobile.
A niche for a general purpose language?
Name one "general purpose language" that currently crosses the
native->scripting divide and has good usage on both ends of the
market. It doesn't exist, because it's almost impossible to do.
Even if your goal is to be general purpose, you have to do it by
taking on one niche at a time, which is even harder because you
have to have your eye on staying general purpose the whole time.
It's an extremely difficult balancing act, with one hand tied
behind your back.
I think D could do it someday, but not the way the market is
today. Right now, it's too easy for many developers to slap
together a webapp on rails or django and then simply scale up
their hardware when necessary. Maybe that all changes in the
future and efficiency becomes more of a concern on the server,
perhaps when the market matures, but we're not there yet.
In the meantime, mobile is where most new native development has
moved, so D has to really hit that fertile ground. I also think
big data could be big for D, Don mentioned D brought their costs
down a lot in his DConf talk.
