On Wednesday, 3 January 2018 at 18:36:29 UTC, Ola Fosheim Grøstad
wrote:
Then you have this all the psychological effect that if people
have invested significant time, resources and/or emotion into
something then they will defend it and refuse to see flaws even
when faced with massive evidence against it. So the hype will
be sustained by a vocal set of believers if you have reached a
large enough audience with your messaging before the product is
launched…?
Aye.
Then it tapers off in a long tail… or the believers will make
it work somehow, at least good enough to not be a lot worse
than the alternatives.
I am thinking of Python here. I have to work in Python and there
is no love lost.
Regarding hype. I think it is fairly easy to create a new
language these days - thanks to LLVM and JVM targets. New
languages pop up every other week it appears. Getting it right,
however, takes a lot of time. D proves how much it takes to
create a great (complex) language and deal with most corner
cases. Writing a performing compiler (run time and compile time)
is no mean feat.
docs. I just disagree with the aim of trying to make D a hyped
language.
Yes, that is a bit late, I think. You would have to launch D3
or something to get a hype effect (at least in the west).
I think D is too powerful/complicated to become a target for
millions. The irony does not escape me, with many C++/JVM
programmers out there, that D is a great replacement for C++ and
many JVM languages. I did a stretch of Scala and I think D is the
superior language, even if it misses out on some nifty Scala
features. But that does not mean people will take to D in droves.
Scala is bigger.
Anyway, my opinions do not matter that much. Suffice to say I
enjoy D and I think it is perfect for our large data processing
projects.
A language like GNU Guile has only a few developers - and they
do great work.
But is Guile used much outside GNU affiliated projects?
No. Not that I am aware. Still, it is an amazing effort by a
small group of people. I am partial to organizing a Guile/Guix
day. Feel free to join in!
https://libreplanet.org/wiki/Group:Guix/FOSDEM2018.
Pj.
