On Monday, 15 April 2019 at 10:47:39 UTC, Andre Pany wrote:
> Could you please tell what do you miss from the tooling? For me Intellij D plugin combined with language server works like a charme. Code completion, linter, formatting, everything works fine  Dub is working perfectly for all my use cases. I was never in need to really start the debugger but debugging is working to some extend in windows and is working fine on linux. I am even able to develop applications in windows and using WSL directly compile and debug them on linux.
>
> Kind regards
> Andre

Last time I tried IntelliJ D plugin, I liked the way it looks and works, but there was some glitch that caused the IDE to freeze for 5-6 seconds every time I typed something :(

On 15.04.19 11:49, Aldo wrote:
> 
> [Others]
> - Every time I try to read the source code of the std on github, I close the browser tab after 5 seconds. I'm trying to find the body of a simple function, and I need to find it and try to understand how it works in a +10000 lines source file.

Maybe modules should be smaller, but manually finding symbols really is not why. Text search works fine. In fact, some modules have been split now and it has actually slightly increased the inconvenience of manually locating a symbol, because unless you know what went where, you need to grep in multiple files instead of just opening one of the files and doing a search there.

On Monday, 15 April 2019 at 11:34:34 UTC, JN wrote:
> On Monday, 15 April 2019 at 10:47:39 UTC, Andre Pany wrote:
>> Could you please tell what do you miss from the tooling? For me Intellij D plugin combined with language server works like a charme. Code completion, linter, formatting, everything works fine  Dub is working perfectly for all my use cases. I was never in need to really start the debugger but debugging is working to some extend in windows and is working fine on linux. I am even able to develop applications in windows and using WSL directly compile and debug them on linux.
>>
>> Kind regards
>> Andre
>
> Last time I tried IntelliJ D plugin, I liked the way it looks and works, but there was some glitch that caused the IDE to freeze for 5-6 seconds every time I typed something :(

This issue is avoided by using language server DLS for code completion.

See end of this site intellij-dlanguage.github.io

Kind regards
Andre

On Monday, 15 April 2019 at 10:43:12 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:
> On 4/15/2019 3:09 AM, Dibyendu Majumdar wrote:
>> Ultimately it boils down to what you need to do to make a living. If you had tons of spare money you can probably afford to work on something you like or think is good; but if you need to earn then you have to go where the demand is.
> Laeeth Isharc just posted another list of job openings for D programmers at his company:
>
> https://digitalmars.com/d/archives/digitalmars/D/Has_D_failed_unpopular_opinion_but_I_think_yes_325826.html#N325995

Sure but consider this:

Firstly a handful of jobs posted by one company isn't going to sway developers.

Secondly it takes time and effort to master a language such as D. Unless someone is hiring C/C++/Java/C# programmers and is willing to let them learn D on the job, how are you going to sway programmers to invest the time in D when they could be improving their skills in other languages that have much more demand?

On Monday, 15 April 2019 at 10:47:39 UTC, Andre Pany wrote:
> On Monday, 15 April 2019 at 10:09:40 UTC, Dibyendu Majumdar wrote:
>> On Sunday, 14 April 2019 at 20:48:44 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
>>> On 4/14/19 2:09 PM, IGotD- wrote:
>>>> That in mind it is absolute killer feature of D to have a C/C++ FFI that many other languages don't have.
>>>
>>> I agree, and sadly it's not a popular enough opinion. A couple of years ago I called on the phone two of our most promising contributors who asked what they should help with, and pitched the core.stdcpp project. They both declined it. No hard feelings - we're grateful enough they chose to do other things within the D milieu -, but it goes to show that planning and "finding a guy" and telling people what to work on is easier said than done, at least for me. I'm glad Manu has taken point on that, wished he got wider help.
>>
>> I have considered using D for a long time, and yet haven't. The reasons are maybe applicable to many. Ultimately it boils down to what you need to do to make a living. If you had tons of spare money you can probably afford to work on something you like or think is good; but if you need to earn then you have to go where the demand is.
>>
>> The tooling (editor and debugger) is important too for anyone that wants to get the job done or suggest D to an organisation. Here is a proposal:
>>
>> Freeze D development for 2 years and redirect all energy to tooling.
>
> Could you please tell what do you miss from the tooling? For me Intellij D plugin combined with language server works like a charme. Code completion, linter, formatting, everything works fine  Dub is working perfectly for all my use cases. I was never in need to really start the debugger but debugging is working to some extend in windows and is working fine on linux. I am even able to develop applications in windows and using WSL directly compile and debug them on linux.

I haven't tried recently but every time I tried in the past there were issues... developers / companies expect tooling to 'just work' so that they can get the job done.

I do think tinkering endlessly with D / and its libraries is the wrong focus. Instead core developers should select one set of tooling and work on making them usable; D is already good enough.

It is no good saying to programmers that okay step up and fix the tooling yourself. No one (unless they have spare cash to burn) can afford to fix the tooling and then also do their jobs. That's the reality whether anyone likes it or not.

On Monday, 15 April 2019 at 13:52:53 UTC, Dibyendu Majumdar wrote:
> On Monday, 15 April 2019 at 10:47:39 UTC, Andre Pany wrote:
>> On Monday, 15 April 2019 at 10:09:40 UTC, Dibyendu Majumdar wrote:
>>> On Sunday, 14 April 2019 at 20:48:44 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
>>>> [...]
>>>
>>> I have considered using D for a long time, and yet haven't. The reasons are maybe applicable to many. Ultimately it boils down to what you need to do to make a living. If you had tons of spare money you can probably afford to work on something you like or think is good; but if you need to earn then you have to go where the demand is.
>>>
>>> The tooling (editor and debugger) is important too for anyone that wants to get the job done or suggest D to an organisation. Here is a proposal:
>>>
>>> Freeze D development for 2 years and redirect all energy to tooling.
>>
>> Could you please tell what do you miss from the tooling? For me Intellij D plugin combined with language server works like a charme. Code completion, linter, formatting, everything works fine  Dub is working perfectly for all my use cases. I was never in need to really start the debugger but debugging is working to some extend in windows and is working fine on linux. I am even able to develop applications in windows and using WSL directly compile and debug them on linux.
>
> I haven't tried recently but every time I tried in the past there were issues... developers / companies expect tooling to 'just work' so that they can get the job done.
>
> I do think tinkering endlessly with D / and its libraries is the wrong focus. Instead core developers should select one set of tooling and work on making them usable; D is already good enough.
>
> It is no good saying to programmers that okay step up and fix the tooling yourself. No one (unless they have spare cash to burn) can afford to fix the tooling and then also do their jobs. That's the reality whether anyone likes it or not.

One set of tooling will not work. I highly valuate that Rainer is working on Visual Studio plugin and Webfreak as far as I know is working on Visual Studio Code. But both tools I can't use because I dislike how MS designed the development workflow.  Each developer has his/her preference.

I used my spare time to improve the tools I use at work (dub, IntelliJ D plugin). It worths the effort, it makes you happy and the community.

Kind regards
Andre

On 4/15/2019 6:41 AM, Dibyendu Majumdar wrote:
> Firstly a handful of jobs posted by one company isn't going to sway developers.

It sounded like you personally were looking for a D job. Besides, since there are outstanding D job openings, arguing one can't get a job with D doesn't work. Companies are posting here *looking* for D programmers.

Quite a lot of D programmers have been able to get D jobs. Attending DConf is a great way to network with companies looking to hire (as is typical with focused tech conferences).

On Monday, 15 April 2019 at 20:07:52 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:
> On 4/15/2019 6:41 AM, Dibyendu Majumdar wrote:
>> Firstly a handful of jobs posted by one company isn't going to sway developers.
>
> It sounded like you personally were looking for a D job. Besides, since there are outstanding D job openings, arguing one can't get a job with D doesn't work. Companies are posting here *looking* for D programmers.
>
> Quite a lot of D programmers have been able to get D jobs. Attending DConf is a great way to network with companies looking to hire (as is typical with focused tech conferences).

i am glad that you get away with a little bit of IntelliJ and some sort of pseudo job applications.

Please think about all the problems brought forth and tooling.

On Monday, 15 April 2019 at 20:07:52 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:
> On 4/15/2019 6:41 AM, Dibyendu Majumdar wrote:
>> Firstly a handful of jobs posted by one company isn't going to sway developers.
>
> It sounded like you personally were looking for a D job.

No, sorry for giving the wrong impression.

> Besides, since there are outstanding D job openings, arguing one can't get a job with D doesn't work. Companies are posting here *looking* for D programmers.

I am not sure I was arguing anything.

>
> Quite a lot of D programmers have been able to get D jobs. Attending DConf is a great way to network with companies looking to hire (as is typical with focused tech conferences).

Looks like thing are very bright for D then!

On Friday, 12 April 2019 at 13:50:42 UTC, SrMordred wrote:
> On Friday, 12 April 2019 at 08:02:30 UTC, JN wrote:
>> more behind the scenes, around the same level of popularity as Nim, Crystal.
>
> Since i think this is a talk about popularity...
>
> I feel that Nim and Crystal have WAY more adoption/popularity than D, but im not sure if both are backed by any great group (like Rust).
>
> So I think a good point to focus this discussion is, why Nim and Crystal got the lead in popularity but not D?

As somebody who programs in Crystal, i find the statement that Crystal is leading in popularity is a bit of a overstatement. Nim probably has a even lower popularity then Crystal.

Crystal suffers from a lot of the same issues that D does.

Editor support is lacking. D technically has more and better Editor support but again but most editor support feel amateurism at best with bugs, lockups and more.

Windows support is currently non-existing and being worked upon. D has that but ... it tends to be "fragile".

Multithreading is being worked on but again ...

D clearly is a much more advanced programming language with BetterC and the whole gamma of options.

And this is where things turn into Crystal its advantage. Despite all the missing features, its so easy to get tasks setup and going. The roadblocks feel less of a issue. D just feels *old* with the 1001 command line options.

I see so many times when a user has a issue, people responds with "do -xwys" command. And yes, it works but its a design flaw at the same time. A good modern programming language runs almost any task without a end user ever needing to learn half a manual of command line arguments. Do a search on this very message board and compare this to other languages.

Most of my work these days is programming web applications. Lets be honest, the web and mobile will keep growing and intermixing more and more. Webasm is another sign of this. Yet, it ends up being a task and half to get even a basic HTTP solution going for D, let alone one that performs.

Vibe-D when tested against real world scenarios makes PHP look like a Ferrari. We do not even start on the whole incompatibilities between D versions and Vibe-D ( or depending packages ).

At my old job i spend a week trying to implement some code in D and being unhappy about all the other stuff i needed to write just to get it function. I spend a day in PHP and was finished. Sure, it was slower, used more memory but my time was way more valuable.

Crystal when upgrading tends to be so easy to fix changes, where as a lot of the D eco system depends so much on specific versions of D. With constant changes for new features and removals of old ones, D keeps hurting so many packages. I see plugin authors simply giving up and not bothering fixing older code because its too much work.

If we compare this to PHP, what gets so much unholy criticism from people ( a lot undeserved because years out of date information ), there seems to be a much more strong desire to keep things going. Because a lot of the eco system does not depend on specific PHP versions or it keeps a large amount of backward compatibility, we can run old 5.6 code that has not seen a update in 4 years without issues. Try running not updated 4 year old D code that is not a few basic lines and that depends on dependencies. Go ahead, i will wait :)

This brings us back to Crystal. Its slow to develop because its only a few people also but they do have a main focus on keeping compatible with older code. And you feel this in the community and responses.

I do not think D is dead but you feel a lot of people are somewhat allergic to outsiders here. A lot of topic by simply reading almost feel like "My precious!!!(Gollum)" as people are helpful but very fast to go apeshit if criticism come up as to why things are complicated. Especially if that user compares it to other languages.

Now i see people mentioning D3 and i think by myself: If you can not make D1 and D2 a success without turning it into a massive fuzzball, what makes you think that D3 is any better? All you send up with is a even more split community and more resources down the drain.

Do you want a solution? Sure and the answer is: There is non that people will accept! D is a marvelous piece of compiler but that is the issue. Everybody is so focus on the compiler and features aspect, that they forget it takes a army of grunds to make the eco system, editors etc AND to maintain them!

Without a corporate backer, who wants to put time into your system, you have nothing that really lasts. Look at Jetbrain... Go got support very fast. Rust got a company and community backed plugin. D ... has a best a half supported community plugin that depends on one guy for most of the work. Visual Studio Code has the same issue. One guy doing most of the work. Their is simply very little focus on creating community multi backed solution beyond people posting here "why do you not do it".

Somebody mentioned codingame just a few days ago... The first responds to this user: "You're probably in the best position, as a user of the site, to advocate D's inclusion.". Yes, a random newbie who asked why D was not on this website, where you learn to program needs to "do the work" to get D on it.

It happens with so many topics and the person leaves, to never come back. Or this person will pick a fight as "why do i need to do that". So many people here think that if you disagree or find a issue, its your task to fix it. And while some people have the time, skill and motivation, MOST DO NOT!

I said plenty already on this topic but its really a big part of the community here why D itself is not going forward. Too many Ph.D type attitudes but it backfires on the "common" man. Say what you want about Rust ( and it legion of zealots ) but they really worked hard to make community, editor and other support easier. Even cross compilation is so easy unlike a aforementioned language. And i do not even use Rust in my daily work.

The reality is that a lot of this community is somewhat toxic and internally focused without it realizes itself. This is probably the main reason for D its failure to really grow outside a few companies and projects. People keep forgetting the basics. If its not dead simple, you can only sell your product to a already existing marked of complex users. Moving those users, with years of invested time into your product is HARD!!!! Any good sales person will tell you this. And that is a other issue. The lack of real useful things that makes a advanced user switch from C/C++ or whatever languages and pick up D before a language like Rust.

We can say that D WASTED 20 years time and now has competitors that simply have their acts better together. Its like trying to piss in a stream, while your standing downstream. It just flows back on you.

The reality is, D brings few new things to the market that a competitor can not copy ( C++ already did, so why switch ). D dropped the ball a long time ago and no offense guys but seeing the current state and its evolution, sure, you get a bit more attention but your not growing because of all the issues, code and more.

I am sure that we shall see each other again in a few months when the next topic pops up with people complaining. The reality is, D simply does not evolve in a way to really make it gain any popularity that is required to grew its eco system. And now with competitors like Go, Rust, ... and minor competitors like Crystal, Nim, ... and the already established competitors taking D features a long time ago.