On Wednesday, 17 January 2024 at 07:19:28 UTC, Lars Johansson wrote:

I vouch for friendly community in my limited sample of interactions though and a fork is not a bad thing. I came because I was curious about D's shape nowadays. I considered D in the past but went C++ even when my wish is D really.

I understand the higher value of your time and energy and certainly don't take it casually. There is an argument of fun of course and motivation too. My personal opinion is a programmer who is good is usually someone who likes problem solving (hence fun) but also has a motivation which is either money or some computing problem. Computing problems/applications have many branches for each specific case.

There are many aspects in development that need to be weighted too ad that is where the features of a programming language take hold. In some languages some things may even take 10 minutes while in the other language it takes 2 hours as an example and this is a huge thing for commercial software AKA Implementation costs.

But we cannot delve more into your decision until we know what are your motivations and also describe your concern beyond a metaphor of "Pandora's box". The question is, What is wrong with the Pandora box for you? Have you decided on a programming project already and what do you hope to achieve?

On Wednesday, 17 January 2024 at 07:19:28 UTC, Lars Johansson wrote:

Well using the language is a very different experience than reading the forums here, do don't worry too much about the shoutings and I'd say don't read the forums too often ^^. D the language is super "peaceful" to use.

There are systematic conflicts in language development that also happen to other communities, sometimes a bit worse maybe:
Ocaml: https://lobste.rs/s/atqtzp/introducing_opend_d_language_fork_is_open#c_oa2vwx
Clojure: https://lobste.rs/s/atqtzp/introducing_opend_d_language_fork_is_open#c_xqxeos

I think Learning D is very rewarding since it's it very "moldable", it adapts to any task and personally allows my best work to be produced.

On Wednesday, 17 January 2024 at 07:19:28 UTC, Lars Johansson wrote:

What do you plan to write that can't be done in Python/Ruby?

On Thursday, 18 January 2024 at 01:18:00 UTC, tony wrote:

Something fun perhaps?😎

Seriously, the reason I use D is precisely because it meets that perfect peak intersection on the graph between powerful and genuinely fun/enjoyable to work with. When I'm not doing commercial work in D, I have folder upon folder of little snippets and experiments I've done just to explore new ideas or try something entertaining or creative, because it's just that easy, and appealing, to jump right in and do it in D. Other languages haven't inspired me to that degree, and I'm one that rode the perl wagon for long after it should have turned around and headed back to civilization.

On Wednesday, 17 January 2024 at 07:19:28 UTC, Lars Johansson wrote:

Thanks for all good answers.
There were some questions raised:

Why do you turn to this forum for opinions about D? - You show know D best. I guess I needed some moral support.

What are you going to do with D? - Mostly for fun.

I like coding.
In the distant pasts I did an awful lot of IBM assembler and that was fun. Since the early 90ties mostly hilvl languages and scripting. Now as retired I like to see if I’m still able to learn a new language.
The only language I looked at so far that looks appealing to me is D, thou templates look a bit odd.
I suspect if I learn a lolvl language, I will come up with something useful.
I still do some $work (more than I like). So I’m not sure how much time I will spend on D. Anyhow I will give it a try.

Thank you again. I did not expect that many and nice responses.
Next time I write it will be in a beginner forum, not this one.

On Saturday, 20 January 2024 at 11:22:19 UTC, Lars Johansson wrote:

That sounds good, yet you need to define your areas of development if you want to use existing libraries and want to avoid reinventing the wheel. Do you want to write programs for the terminal or scripts, applications, API's, libraries for other developers to use?

If it exclusively for fun, then I think you can consider competitive coding where you encounter teasers and improve over time and in the future decide some computational needs if you want.

There are many platforms for competitive coding like SPOJ but look as many sources as possible that have D also.

On Wednesday, 17 January 2024 at 07:19:28 UTC, Lars Johansson wrote:

The last D code that I had in production was deployed in 2017. I've maintained that for a while and then I've stopped using D in around 2020. I was never and still am not half as good as the rest of the people in this forum. Had this been 2018 and if you are a pragmatist and/or you don't like reinventing the wheel over and over again, I'd say D is not for you. Regardless of what went around, D has kept its integrity and its promise. More importantly, now it has a wider community, better tools, better ecosystem, I don't see any reason why D wouldn't be the tool you'd enjoy from now on.

On Wednesday, 17 January 2024 at 07:19:28 UTC, Lars Johansson wrote:

For me the decision to invest into a language is 70% pragmatism and 30% fun.
I came across D language for a project to validate and manipulate large csv files.
The goal is to check integrity of the content and "transpatch" data from several other files into it. The prototype was written in python and it works but execution is slow. My second choiche was to use Ocaml beacuse I like functional programming. However since performance was sub terrestrial I started to implement in plain C. The code was blazing fast but I had lots of "fun" with the dynamic memory management. (e.g. strange things when realloc of internalized data ) Then I came to D and decided to continue with it for several reasons:

1. coding experience was very similar to python and C.
2. Language does memory management. No need for malloc, realloc
3. very fast execution time of the code
4. platform independence (Windows and Linux)
5. Native Code w/o Virtual machine (you can distribute an EXE)
6. getting setup very fast: without installing tons of tools and libraries
7. support of functional programming

So for my problem D is a very good choice. I have no problem that popularity of D is not so high as for other languages as long as it helps me to get my work done.

On Wednesday, 17 January 2024 at 07:19:28 UTC, Lars Johansson wrote:

"if a system is too complicated to use, many features will go unused because no one has time to learn them".

D does have considerable complexity.

Maybe D does need a fork, called.. SimpleD

But in the meantime, you'll have to navigate D carefully, and learn those things which are relevant to your goals.

If learning all of language is your goal, you may need more time than you've got ;-)

On the otherhand, D's complexity will ensure those neurons keep firing, for many decades to come - and that in itself is a good thing.