On Thursday, 23 August 2018 at 06:34:01 UTC, nkm1 wrote:
The only real problem with D is that it's a language designed
with
GC in mind, yet there are numerous attempts to use it without
GC.
Also, supporting GC-less programming gets in the way of
improving
D's GC (which is pretty damn bad by modern standards).
That's the only real technical problem.
I think a large part is defining what kind of users D wants to
attract. There are two main groups of programmers, and there is a
vast rift between those groups. One group is people who are
closer to OOP programming and languages such as Java, C#,
Javascript. These people are OK with things like garbage
collectors and in cases where it matters, have learned to work
around it (avoid allocations in hot loops, etc.). I feel like D1
was attractive for these people for having the convenience they
are used to from their languages (batteries included standard
library, automatic memory management), with additional features
that their language/environments struggle with (C interop, native
binaries), everything packed
with a very clean syntax.
The second group are the C/C++ programmers, the 'zero cost
abstraction' group. For this group of programmers, any overhead
is a disadvantage, garbage collector is unusable for most
usecases (whether true or not, that's the perception). D1
appealed to those people, for having a clean syntax and the
features they know without having to include the monster that is
Boost. Battlefield was different back then too. Around D2 came
the competition, be it Rust, Go, or C++17. Go is appealing more
to the first group of programmers, since it has a GC, and mostly
sticks to webservice usage. Rust is heavily appealing to the
zero-cost abstraction group and C++17 obviously appeals to C++
folks.
Is it possible to make a language that both groups would be happy
to use? Perhaps, or perhaps the gap is too wide. Is adding
features like dip1000 and betterC spreading ourselves too thin?
Perhaps. Perhaps there are features that aren't really used, and
should be reworked or cut from the language instead (has anyone
ever used contracts?).
D's not UNIX (DNU?), but the first rule of UNIX philosophy is
"Make each program do one thing well. To do a new job, build
afresh rather than complicate old programs by adding new
'features'.". It may or may not be relevant here.
BTW. on the offtopic note - the thread title doesn't look too
good. Imagine being a newcomer, and the first thread you see on
the forum is titled "D is dead".
