On Thu, 2015-03-12 at 20:24 -0700, Walter Bright via Digitalmars-d
wrote:
[…]
> 
> There's no doubt about it, people like simple languages. We should very much keep that in mind when evaluating proposals for new features.

How about lining up some features for removal.

C++, Fortran, and Java are big, complicated languages, that keep getting bigger and more complicated because of the obsession with backward compatibility. D is already a big, complicated language. If people like straighforward (not necessarily simple) languages, then the inference is quite easy.

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Russel. ============================================================================= Dr Russel Winder      t: +44 20 7585 2200   voip: sip:russel.winder@ekiga.net 41 Buckmaster Road    m: +44 7770 465 077   xmpp: russel@winder.org.uk London SW11 1EN, UK   w: www.russel.org.uk  skype: russel_winder

On Thu, 2015-03-12 at 17:20 -0700, Andrei Alexandrescu via Digitalmars-d
wrote:
[…]
> - no good IDE

Not entirely true, there are Emacs, VIM, LiteIDE, and others for Go development.


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Russel. ============================================================================= Dr Russel Winder      t: +44 20 7585 2200   voip: sip:russel.winder@ekiga.net 41 Buckmaster Road    m: +44 7770 465 077   xmpp: russel@winder.org.uk London SW11 1EN, UK   w: www.russel.org.uk  skype: russel_winder

On Fri, 2015-03-13 at 02:19 +0000, Vladimir Panteleev via Digitalmars-d wrote:
> On Friday, 13 March 2015 at 02:17:31 UTC, bearophile wrote:
> > D can't be a single-purpose language.
> 
> Yeah. The other side of the coin is that, from a D user's perspective, Go and Rust are one-trick ponies.

On the other hand Go is gaining massive traction in the market, and there is much anticipation regarding Rust.

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Russel. ============================================================================= Dr Russel Winder      t: +44 20 7585 2200   voip: sip:russel.winder@ekiga.net 41 Buckmaster Road    m: +44 7770 465 077   xmpp: russel@winder.org.uk London SW11 1EN, UK   w: www.russel.org.uk  skype: russel_winder

On Thu, 2015-03-12 at 21:49 -0700, Walter Bright via Digitalmars-d wrote:
> On 3/12/2015 8:40 PM, Joakim wrote:
> > As for "will it be around?," presumably he thinks Go will stick around because of Google.  That cuts both ways, because if Google stops funding, maybe Pike and the other main devs abandon it, while D seemingly has never had anyone sponsoring Walter, so there's nobody holding the funding spigot here.

It is already clear that if Google stopped funding Go tomorrow and re-assigned the entire current Go development team, and forbade them to even talk about Go, the project ownership would be passed on, and it would become just like any other language FOSS project.

Currently though, despite the core teams protestations to the contrary, Go is definitely a Google project, owned by them lock stock and barrel.

> Google does abandon significant projects now and then, such as this one:
> 
> http://google-opensource.blogspot.com/2015/03/farewell-to-google-code.html

This needed to go, like many other CVCS project hosting systems it
failed to evolve with the move to DVCS for FOSS. Sourceforge is at least
trying to move with the times.

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Russel. ============================================================================= Dr Russel Winder      t: +44 20 7585 2200   voip: sip:russel.winder@ekiga.net 41 Buckmaster Road    m: +44 7770 465 077   xmpp: russel@winder.org.uk London SW11 1EN, UK   w: www.russel.org.uk  skype: russel_winder

On 3/12/2015 11:57 PM, Russel Winder via Digitalmars-d wrote:
> How about lining up some features for removal.

Easier said than done. I've proposed a couple things for removal, but got a lot of pushback. Some things have been successfully removed:

. octal literals
. 'bit' data type
. builtin complex numbers
. NCEG floating point comparison
. typedef
. local operators new & delete


> C++, Fortran, and Java are big, complicated languages, that keep getting
> bigger and more complicated because of the obsession with backward
> compatibility. D is already a big, complicated language. If people like
> straighforward (not necessarily simple) languages, then the inference is
> quite easy.

Has any language been successful at abandoning their user base (i.e. existing code)? Going from D1 to D2 nearly destroyed D. I'm not eager to try that again.

On Friday, 13 March 2015 at 00:20:40 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
> ## some or all of @safe, immutable, pure should be the default
> # libraries, projects should be prominently listed and nurtured
+1
> # single-idea advantage; D seems to embody too many ideas at once
> ## concurrency?
> ## networking?
> ## generics?
> ## interoperability with C and C++?
> ## focus on one!
-1
>
> General feeling: "I don't feel smart enough for D and am looking for a quick way to accomplish a goal.
+1

@safe by default would be a great change(and IMHO, immutable by default. But I highly doubt that would ever get through.)

I don't think the single idea part is a good suggestion. There's nothing wrong with a language featuring multiple paradigms/focusing on multiple areas as long as they're all well implemented(and D does this reasonably well!)

But I do agree with the "I don't feel smart enough for D." I really don't know how to fix this, maybe it's just a symptom of the above - I don't really feel smart enough for C++ and I've been using it for years : )

Getting prominent D projects more recognition should be a really high priority.

On Friday, 13 March 2015 at 00:20:40 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
>
> # language designers think of features, users think of purpose

On Friday, 13 March 2015 at 03:24:44 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:
>
> There's no doubt about it, people like simple languages. We should very much keep that in mind when evaluating proposals for new features.

This! I'm getting more and more disillusioned with D purely because of the constant feature creep. I just wish there was an actual goal for D2. When Rob Pike gets asked to add something (especially generics) he says "No, we're done.". This attitude breeds stability.

Keep all the other great ideas for D3 goals.

I've being using Go more and more and while it does have its shortcoming and is not as advanced as D (or as fast), it's easily understandable and gets stuff done. The built-in tools that ship with Go are particularly awesome.

On Friday, 13 March 2015 at 06:58:59 UTC, Russel Winder wrote:
> On Thu, 2015-03-12 at 17:20 -0700, Andrei Alexandrescu via Digitalmars-d
> wrote:
> […]
>> - no good IDE
>
> Not entirely true, there are Emacs, VIM, LiteIDE, and others for Go
> development.

Never heard of LiteIDE, but Emacs and VIM aren't really IDEs,
they are just glorified text editors. When people say IDE, they
not only mean the text editing part, but the management of the
build process and visual debugging, including watches,
breakpoints, step-by-step debugging etc.

On Friday, 13 March 2015 at 03:24:44 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:
> On 3/12/2015 5:20 PM, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
>> * Golang: simple!
>
> D1 was the simple version of D. People wanted more.
>
> Java was originally sold as, and got a great of adoption because, it was a C++ like language with all that annoying complexity removed.
>
> There's no doubt about it, people like simple languages. We should very much keep that in mind when evaluating proposals for new features.

I'll never forget what Bjarne said about people wanting a "simple language." His response to "I want a simple language" was, "No, you don't!" Because it's always "I want it to be simple... with just this one extra little feature in it."

It was in his list of "Language Myths" in his talk at Lang-NEXT. http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/Lang-NEXT/Lang-NEXT-2014/Keynote

On Friday, 13 March 2015 at 00:20:40 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
> * Golang: simple!
> + clear feeling it's here to stay

> * Dlang: big!
> # will it be around?


In my view, Go and Rust look more riskier, it would suffice of a high executive changing her mind for such projects to be stopped. They might be successful but to survive in corporations projects have to be successful enough.