On Monday, 26 November 2018 at 16:42:40 UTC, bachmeier wrote:
On Monday, 26 November 2018 at 16:21:39 UTC, Joakim wrote:
I agree that it was a risky title, as many who don't know D
will simply see it and go, "Yet another slow compiler, eh,
I'll pass" and not click on the link. Whereas others who have
heard something of D will be intrigued, as they know it's
already supposed to compile fast. And yet more others will
click on it purely for the controversy, just to gawk at some
technical bickering.
I don't actually think it was risky. What are the odds that
someone was going to start using D for a major project but then
changed her mind upon seeing a title on HN or Reddit? Probably
very small that even one person did that.
Yes, but you're ignoring the much larger group I mentioned- those
who only vaguely heard of D, if at all- and the negative title
gives them a reason not to look into it further.
And then there is always the fact that there was a story on
HN/Reddit about D. It's hard for publicity for a language like
D to be bad when so few people use it.
The quote that "there's no such thing as bad publicity" comes
from art and show business though, don't think it's true for tech
and other markets. When your audience is looking for a tool and
not entertainment, there's lots of ways for bad publicity to sink
it.
Anyway, I noted in this case that the provocative title may
actually have gotten more people to read a positive post, so the
pros likely outweighed the cons. We can just never know how large
the unclicked-on downside was: you can never measure how many
people heard of but _didn't_ buy your book, because they didn't
like the title or something else about its exterior.
On Monday, 26 November 2018 at 16:53:59 UTC, Guillaume Piolat
wrote:
On Monday, 26 November 2018 at 16:21:39 UTC, Joakim wrote:
In my opinion language adoption is a seduction/sales process
very much like business-to-consumer is, the way I see it it's
strikingly similar to marketing B2C apps, unless there will
be no "impulse buy".
I find that hard to believe: we are talking about a technical
tool here.
How many times have you been in this conversation:
--
- What language are you using?
- D.
- I know next to nothing about D.
- Oh, it's very good, I even built a business on it! list of arguments and features>.
- Oh no thanks. I should try Rust, it's secure, fast, modern
blah blah; facts don't matter to me. But in reality I won't
even learn a new language, I'm happy with a language without
multi-threading.
--
It happens to me ALL THE TIME.
This pattern is so predictable it's becoming boring so now I
just keep silent.
Never, I don't go around trying to convince people one-on-one to
use D. I have given talks to groups introducing the language,
that's how I go about it.
What happens? Rust / Go have outmarketed us with words.
The battle (of marketing) is on words not technical features,
Rust happen to own "programming language" + "safety", what do
we own? D is good in all kinds of directions and the marketing
message is less simple.
The leaders choose to own the word "fast" (see our new motto
"fast code, fast" which is very accurate) and it's important to
get aligned.
I'll note that in your example they haven't actually learnt Rust
either. I don't think marketing is that relevant for D at this
stage, nor for Rust/Go either.
The way anything- tech, fashion, TV shows- becomes popular is
that some early tastemaker decides that it's worth using or
backing. Eventually, enough early adopters find value that it
spreads out to the majority, who simply follow their lead.
Most people aren't early adopters of most things. They like to
think they are, so they'll give you all kinds of
rational-sounding reasons for why they don't like some new tech,
but the real underlying thought process goes something like this,
"I have no idea if this new tech will do well or not. I could
take a risk on it but it's safer not to, so I will just wait and
see if it gets popular, then follow the herd."
Very few will admit this though, hence the list of
plausible-sounding reasons that don't actually make sense! ;)
As Laeeth always says, you're best off looking for people who're
actually capable and empowered to make such risky decisions,
rather than aiming for the majority too early, because they only
jump on board once the bandwagon is stuffed and rolling downhill.
Also, regardless of how languages are chosen as they get into
the majority, D is very much still in the
innovators/early-adopters stage:
But the current state of D would very much accomodate the
middle-of-the-curve adopters. The language rarely breaks stuff.
People making money with it, making long-term bets.
Hell, I could make a laundry list of things that are better in
D versus any alternatives! That doesn't bring users.
I'm not talking about the quality of th