On Tuesday, 22 December 2020 at 19:15:02 UTC, John Smith wrote:

>
> "The D programming language was trendy for a bit, 15 years ago. Now it's just old tech people make blogs about reviving retro games as a gimmick. It never got substantial traction because it sat half way between Java and C++ in a way programmers from neither camp would switch to it. Rust is fundamentally different, it attacks C++ at its heart and is not only a better language, but a superior programming platform. In a few years the ecosystem will be large enough that there are no reasons for anyone to choose C++ anymore, and at that point, what is the relevance of D?"
>
> "I still love D but with the standardization of C++11 and the rise of Go and Rust, D won't have a chance again."
>
> "The Python 2-to-3 transition worked because Python is too big to fail. D has never reached that momentum. Rust is a more modern language in comparison to D and the trend will continue without D3. Also the drama back to ~2009 was pretty bad and the community got hurt. Three of my colleagues wrote long programs in D but have abandoned the ship."
>
> "I say this in all seriousness: this is probably a mistake, and the Dlang crew should make plans to exploit the opportunity to do a D3/3D release to the greatest extent possible—if only for marketing purposes and while holding onto the secret that there are no breaking changes involved."

There's no way we can ever eliminate this sort of talk. No matter what we do in the D community, no matter the progress we make, there will *always* be naysayers. The best any of us can do is to keep working toward making that progress happen.

I've been in the D community for 17 years and it has been "dying" or "irrelevant" or "a toy language" for that entire time Yet the language has continued to improve, the community has continued to grow, and it's the language those who stick around want to use. I learned long ago to ignore the noise and to focus on the work I want to do and on how I can do more to contribute. Some minds can be changed, but most never will.

And it's up to us to reach those whose minds can be changed. Every blog post, every tweet, every project we reference in a social media comment thread, has the potential to bring more people into the community. Some percentage of them will stay and some percentage of those will become contributors. And all the while comments like the above will appear on reddit and HN. Though in my experience, reddit and HN threads these days tend to be net positive more often than they used to be.

And we all have different ideas about what should be the priority at any given point in time, or what needs improvement, or in which direction we need to go. But as long as we keep our heads down and do the work, we will continue to grow.

On Wed, Dec 23, 2020 at 01:16:43AM +0000, Mike Parker via Digitalmars-d wrote: [...]
> There's no way we can ever eliminate this sort of talk. No matter what we do in the D community, no matter the progress we make, there will *always* be naysayers.

To put it more in perspective, in *every* language community there are naysayers.  Some of us are arguably C/C++/Java/etc. naysayers, for example. ;-)


> The best any of us can do is to keep working toward making that progress happen.

+1.  Talk is cheap, whining is actually free.  But actually contributing towards progress is what counts.


> I've been in the D community for 17 years and it has been "dying" or "irrelevant" or "a toy language" for that entire time Yet the language has continued to improve, the community has continued to grow, and it's the language those who stick around want to use. I learned long ago to ignore the noise and to focus on the work I want to do and on how I can do more to contribute. Some minds can be changed, but most never will.

Labels like "irrelevant" or "dying" mean nothing to me.  I use what I find useful, and discard what I don't find useful, who cares what people say about it.  So what if "people" find Java or C++ "more relevant" -- maybe it's more relevant to them, more power to them -- to me, Java is counterproductive while D is much more useful and productive.  Let the naysayers say nay, while I save my breath for actually writing code in the language of my choice.  :-D


> And it's up to us to reach those whose minds can be changed. Every blog post, every tweet, every project we reference in a social media comment thread, has the potential to bring more people into the community. Some percentage of them will stay and some percentage of those will become contributors. And all the while comments like the above will appear on reddit and HN. Though in my experience, reddit and HN threads these days tend to be net positive more often than they used to be.
[...]

I've surreptitiously inserted mentions of D on reddit on various occasions.  When not brought up in a confrontational context, it actually does draw people's interest. They may not convert immediately, but these little positive impressions do add up over time.  Maybe one day they'll take an active interest.  But being pushy or confrontational usually turns people off.


T

-- 
Those who don't understand D are condemned to reinvent it, poorly. -- Daniel N