On Sunday, 21 December 2014 at 11:33:05 UTC, matovitch wrote:
On Sunday, 21 December 2014 at 11:18:43 UTC, Joakim wrote:
Native efficiency combined with expressiveness and ease of
use, as the front page says. That's too general-purpose to
just go build some specialized app like docker, but in the
long run may lead to much bigger wins.
I think so too, D aims at a broader goal than most of the new
languages out there.
I find the people in here quite grumpy these days. D is already
a great usable and enjoyable language. I agree that some
features should be removed and other extended for closure. But
it's nothing that can't be achived in a few years.
Funnily enough, I had the same thoughts about grumpiness. And it
is not just the D forum, but this moment more generally, at least
in the English-speaking world. One of the ways I want to start
using D is to do work on text analysis in order to better
understand the influence of _affect_ on perception, economic
fundamentals and market pricing. I have not been able to find a
better tool than D for this (only a bit more work to port the
libraries). Others are looking at this, but I think they start
from a mechanistic idea that does not truly describe or lead to
insights about mass human emotional dynamics.
For a concrete example of what I mean, it is in my view no
coincidence that 2008 saw strife in the world of D (and, I
gather, an explosion of bug reports) at the same time as
gathering turmoil in financial markets. The unfolding of a
negative wave in affect, and its influence via the neuroeconomics
phenomenon of misattribution of mood played a key part.
Back to D itself: comparing oneself with others may be
destructive when the situation of others is different because one
may learn a lesson that simply doesn't apply, even if at a
pre-conscious level. Andrei made this point some time ago. And
it is good that people argue if that means they have high
standards and care about meeting them (see a recent book -
something like the upside of your dark side), provided we use
this energy to make things better, which, to this newcomer to D
is what seems to be happening.
Social institutions ebb and flow. And a language is a social
institution. The argument that because X has not gone anywhere
means in the future it will not go anywhere is mistaken (whether
or not the conclusion holds depends on other factors). The right
complemtentary factors as well as the right external conditions
need to be in place before something reaches a point where it
takes off publicly. I don't think these conditions and factors
were there before for D, and I wouldn't have bothered mentioning
to people in finance. But that is different now...
D isn't competing head on with any major language in its dominant
use case, because that never favours the little guy. Where any
newcomer gets traction is at the fringes - see the Innovators
Dilemma by Christensen. It builds strength quietly in areas
neglected by the dominant player, and uses the table scraps to
create something of intrinsically great future power later in its
development. I am no expert, but I am a thoughtful user, and I
think for example one sees a little complacency in the neglect by
senior people in Python of the need for raw power given its all
I/O or done by the C library back end. Many projects like cython
and pypy, but from what I have been able to see for my uses they
are inferior to doing it all in D.
One should look at the notable relative success stories too - do
more of what is working than necessarily be all things to all
men. Sociomantic, adroll, Facebook? Seems like if D has an edge
in these areas, its not a domain that is going to be shrinking in
the next few years...
