On Friday, 4 May 2018 at 11:35:22 UTC, Sjoerd Nijboer wrote:
So i'm a college student in and what bothers me is that there
seem to kind of assume programming languages don't evolve or
don't get replaced by better ones.
Right now if you go to college you'll most likely get tought
c++, c# or java for any comp sci degree. While these languages
are industrial standards, they all have their drawbacks. And
one drawback that looks important for teaching is flexibility
in expressiveness.
From my experience college students seem to have problems
translating their often declarative thought process into actual
semi compile-able code that runs in a given language.
Since D seems to be a language that supports a lot of
programming paradigms very well, wouldn't it be beneficial to
learn people declarative programming using D for a little and
from there expose them to other programming styles in thesame
language to lower the barrier of entry?
I think D could play a bigger role in education since its such
a "clean" language that is flexible but doesn't have any real
gotcha "features". Its also a language that could potentially
be used over someones entire college career as the primary
language. If this would be achieved there would be a higher
income flow into the industry of young D programmers which will
pollute other programmers with the D mind and featureset.
The biggest issue is that there isn't much industrial work done
in D and that's why it's not taught.
When you're taught to program in specific languages, it's because
those languages are where the job market is at.
I completely agree with your post however, but I don't see D ever
taking off as an educational programming language in the majority
of schools, because it doesn't have a job market to support it.
Say if you apply for a Java job and it says you have 10 years of
experience programming in D and 3 years of experience programming
Java, then another applicant has 7 years of experience
programming in Java, but 0 experience with programming in D.
To the one hiring the person with 7 years of experience seem like
a better choice, just because they generally have no idea what D
is and what it offers. They don't know that if you program in D
you can usually program very well, if not better than most
general Java developers __when__ using Java. All they know is
that they use Java and they're looking for the one with most
experience in that field.
Until D becomes an industrial requirement, then it will not be
taught.
That's why D is a hobby language.
