I'm one of the people currently working on the D intellij plugin(same username on github). We have a fairly comprehensive CONTRIBUTING.md here: https://github.com/intellij-dlanguage/intellij-dlanguage/blob/develop/CONTRIBUTING.md

Currently one of the problems I'm having is that D is really complex(I assume everyone else trying to make a good D IDE as this problem). This means features that are deceptively simple, like goto declaration are quite complex. One thing that could really help with this project would be a contributor with experience on the D compiler, which could help with features like goto declaration and code completion. Additionally I suspect that we have mountains of bugs, so it would also be helpful to get lots of user testing.

On Saturday, 5 August 2017 at 16:22:18 UTC, Russel Winder wrote:
> As far as I can tell there are no good D development environments in the way there are C++, Go, Rust ones. I have no idea about Visual D since that involves Visual Studio which I think involves Windows and possibly money – though paying for a good development environment does usually imply better quality, support and maintenance.

About 90% of computers uses Windows, but D on Linux supported better (for example, VS Code and Mono-D has debugging support).

Visual D also has some problems that sensitive for newbies. For example, no DUB support.

P.S. I don't meant all possible features for IDE (like available for Visual Studio + C# + Resharper, etc). Personally for me it is: debugger, base refactoring, definition goto.

On Sun, 2017-08-06 at 07:04 +0000, Dmitry via Digitalmars-d wrote:
> 
[…]
> About 90% of computers uses Windows, but D on Linux supported better (for example, VS Code and Mono-D has debugging support).

I am sure Microsoft would declare that figure accurate for computers in general. I suspect though that it is totally inaccurate for software developers, in that group I'd bet 40% use MacOS and 20% use Linux.

> Visual D also has some problems that sensitive for newbies. For example, no DUB support.
> 

Given Dub is now seemingly core to D development for many, this is not a good situation.

[…]
-- 
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 Sunday, 6 August 2017 at 10:24:42 UTC, Russel Winder wrote:
> I am sure Microsoft would declare that figure accurate for computers in general. I suspect though that it is totally
It's not Microsoft's statistic. StatCounter, Net Market Share, etc.

> inaccurate for software developers, in that group I'd bet 40% use MacOS and 20% use Linux.
Are you told it as Linux/MacOS developer who always contacts with Linux/MacOS developers? Looks like "A survey on the Internet showed that 100% of people use the Internet" :)

I don't think so.
Why developer should use MacOS/Linux if the target platform is Windows in most of cases?

Just for example. I'm a game developer and almost all game developers who I know works on Windows (MacOS and Linux used by less than 1% of them). BTW, Steam statistic: 96% - Windows.

Another example. A survey of developers (about 15K people) from Russian IT site. Windows ~67%, Linux ~20%, MacOS ~11% (biggest part of these Linux/MacOS developers uses it for web developing).

In any case, the result is same: the biggest platform supported worse than others.

On Sunday, 6 August 2017 at 07:04:34 UTC, Dmitry wrote:
> Visual D also has some problems that sensitive for newbies. For example, no DUB support.

What are you talking about? dub generates solution files for visual d. Of course visual d has DUB support, you just have to generate the solution files via command line.

On Sunday, 6 August 2017 at 12:14:16 UTC, Dmitry wrote:

> In any case, the result is same: the biggest platform supported worse than others.

Then Windows users need to start contributing. Good or bad, this is not a company deciding how to allocate developer time, it is a volunteer organization. I see a lot of posts of the form "this isn't what group X expects". The response will never be "okay, we'll put a couple of guys on it".

On Sunday, 6 August 2017 at 12:14:16 UTC, Dmitry wrote:
>
> I don't think so.
> Why developer should use MacOS/Linux if the target platform is Windows in most of cases?

A developer who mostly targets Windows wouldn't. But if you look at the statistics [1] you'd see that in the category of systems accessing the web mobile&tablet systems (and we are excluding servers here, who are virtually all UNIX systems anyway) have been steadily overtaking classic desktop systems in market share, from which it can be reasonably argued that it's only a matter of time until the amount of development for Windows relative to overall development is declining (regardless of how little it already has).

>
> Just for example. I'm a game developer and almost all game developers who I know works on Windows (MacOS and Linux used by less than 1% of them).

Game development is a (profitable) niche sector, which is indeed dominated by Windows (because of a historically entrenched monopoly, but that's beside the point).

>
> Another example. A survey of developers (about 15K people) from Russian IT site. Windows ~67%, Linux ~20%, MacOS ~11% (biggest part of these Linux/MacOS developers uses it for web developing).

Citation needed.

>
> In any case, the result is same: the biggest platform supported worse than others.

Windows is not the biggest platform. It may be for your use cases, but it's not overall.

[1] http://gs.statcounter.com/platform-market-share/desktop-mobile-tablet/worldwide

On Sunday, 6 August 2017 at 14:16:20 UTC, Moritz Maxeiner wrote:
> A developer who mostly targets Windows wouldn't. But if you look at the statistics [1] you'd see that in the category of systems accessing the web mobile&tablet systems (and we are excluding servers here, who are virtually all UNIX systems anyway) have been steadily overtaking classic desktop systems in market share, from which it can be reasonably argued that it's only a matter of time until the amount of development for Windows relative to overall development is declining (regardless of how little it already has).

How sure are you even with statistics...

On my work half the developers are on Mac, the other half are on Windows. There is not a single Linux system. From the windows developers 2 use "bash" on Windows regularly.

Most firms i have been its always a mix of Windows and Macs. The few Linux guy are die hard fresh from school guys, that are insisted on there Linux system. What some may consider "Ultra Geeks". :-)

It all depends on how you define development. For web development the target is Linux but the development environment is often Windows. So what is the correct a statistical target?

The best view is to see what is going on around one self and its mostly Windows/Mac with Linux deployment/testing for both systems. Windows Bash making that task more easy for the Windows guys.

On Sunday, 6 August 2017 at 14:30:48 UTC, Ryion wrote:
> On Sunday, 6 August 2017 at 14:16:20 UTC, Moritz Maxeiner wrote:
>> [...]
>
> How sure are you even with statistics...
>
> On my work half the developers are on Mac, the other half are on Windows. There is not a single Linux system. From the windows developers 2 use "bash" on Windows regularly.
>
> [...]

1) Anecdotes are not useful here
2) macOS is UNIX, same as Linux, so I'm not sure why the distinction matters as a reply to me

>
> The best view is to see what is going on around one self and its mostly Windows/Mac with Linux deployment/testing for both systems.

Same two points as above.

On Sunday, 6 August 2017 at 14:49:47 UTC, Moritz Maxeiner wrote:
> 1) Anecdotes are not useful here
> 2) macOS is UNIX, same as Linux, so I'm not sure why the distinction matters as a reply to me
>
> Same two points as above.

Thanks for the interesting reply. /S