On Thursday, 18 December 2014 at 09:56:07 UTC, Manu via
Digitalmars-d wrote:
Of course it is language for nerds. Do you see a paid
developer team working
on D? At least ONE paid developer? Maybe someone of existing
commercial
users pays for adding tools / features? It is not a product,
it is not
funded and can't be anything but language for nerds unless YOU
start paying
for the change.
Me? Personally?
Well Remedy kicked in quite substantially for dconf, but I
think my
getting my company involved increases the chances for licensing
and
monetisation than any amount I can donate from my own pocket...
And Remedy sponsorship was very helpful in allowing DConf to
happen and greatly boosting communications as a result. Sadly we
need much more than just one conference. When I am speaking about
personal involvement I don't mean straightforward donation but
efforts to convince companies in your industry to _invest_ into D
ecosystem.
I keep repeating word "investment" and it is crucical. At this
point we don't really need new users, those will come eventually
if issues are fixed. We need more companies willing to dedicate
time of its developers to work on compilers, tools and core
projects of D ecosystem. That is the only way to get what you
expect.
For example, consider your disappointment with Windows support.
As far as I know, 3 largest commercial D users (EMSI, Facebook
Sociomantic; in terms of D developer count) use Linux as
foundation for their D projects. Not sure about EMSI but seems
so. Why would any of those companies invest into making Windows
support better?
You speak about increased chances for licensing and monetisation
but there is not licensing in D world. And hardly any
monetisation. Please take your time to actually understand it.
The fact that your company would have started to use D didn't
fucking matter to D development in general apart from some small
marketing boost. No licenses they would buy to boost further
development, no support contracts with similar benefit. You are
asking for huge amount of combined effort from people that won't
even slightly benefit from the success.
Sometimes I have a feeling that game developers consider
open-source a magic box where you can just shout your complaints
in and eventually put your hand inside and get something useful
out of it. It doesn't work that way.
To start using D effectively in production one needs to stop
considering
himself a customer. This is absolutely critical.
I am obviously personally capable of working around D's
ecosystem
issues; I'm still here after 6 years.
What I am presenting here is an account on why my company
rejected D,
despite a large number of staff being super excited and jazzed
to try
it out.
I'd like to think there's something to learn from that.
I have hardly learned anything new from this story, it is mostly
known points and issues. Instead of telling what needs to be done
please try telling WHO needs to do it and maybe then you will
realize why knowing it is only so useful.
I don't get it... I really can't understand this perspective at
all.
We're not here to be a cool exclusive little club where
super-nerdy
programmers can hang out and talk about advanced language
concepts.
At least, that's absolutely not why I'm here.
A language end-user shouldn't require any personal involvement
in the
development community. I don't hang out with stroustrup and
sutter and
talk about C++.
Exactly what I have meant - we don't truly have END-users. There
are more involved users and less involved users, each working on
parts and tools he needs. Some of those users do it in spare time
and for fun, few are paid programmers enhancing tools needed to
use D in their company. But there is not a single person actually
selling D or getting anything from its success, maybe apart from
Walter himself. How can one have customers without having sellers?
We are all bunch of investors here.
