I may be wrong, but I think that refactoring an existing web
library, renaming the imports of an existing GUI library, and
making a few "marketing" changes to the D web site to make it
more beginner-friendly would not require much man-power, while
this may have the potential to make a HUGE impact on how D is
actually PERCEIVED.
Python language maintainers have a similar approach, and it pays
off...
If you look at the PYPL page (http://pypl.github.io/PYPL.html),
you will read this :
"Worldwide, Java is the most popular language, Python grew the
most in the last 5 years (8.7%) and PHP lost the most (-5.0%)"
Here is what Dlang's official blog says about Python :
"On the author’s MacBook Pro, the Python version takes 12.6
seconds, the D program takes 3.2 seconds. This makes sense as the
D program is compiled to native code. But suppose we run the
Python program with PyPy, a just-in-time Python compiler? This
gives a result of 2.4 seconds, actually beating the D program,
with no changes to the Python code."
(https://dlang.org/blog/2017/05/24/faster-command-line-tools-in-d/)
So actually it can even run faster than D, without any
significant optimization...
For those still not convinced, I suggest they compare the
popularity of D, Kotlin, Golang and Python on Google trends :
https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?q=dlang,kotlin,golang,python
https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?q=dlang%20language,kotlin%20language,golang%20language,python%20language
The green line kilometers high above the ground this Python,
whose I praised the website.
The red line is Kotlin. While available since only a few months,
it is already competing with Go's orange line in terms of
popularity.
Btw their first example is a "Hello World", in different versions.
And the completely flat blue line below all the three other
curves, which desperately looks like the electrocardiogram of a
dead heart, it is D's current popularity (or relative
unpopularity should I say) in Google searches.
QED...
Anyway, it seems that not many people on this forum see any
interest in improving D's popularity on the web with just a few
cheap cosmetic changes to better align it with contenders like
Python or Go, so I will bothered people with unwanted advices.
Instead, may I suggest that we dig the grave deeper by putting
even more complicated examples on D's code roulette so that we
make sure that only the elite of programming could remain
interested in using this language ?
Whoops, sorry, this is already done at the moment actually. Ok,
then I said nothing... LOL
