I saw this post: http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/2s0c3e/thoughts_on_replacement_languages/

And there this comment: http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/2s0c3e/thoughts_on_replacement_languages/cnkzzq7

Comparing Go and D, but some replies are getting a bit harsh against D! So I'm just posting this to call your attention and maybe some experts could reply there too.

Matheus.

PS: I'm not posting this to see any flamewar between languages there, but maybe some could enlighten the discussion with some nice facts.

Matheus.

On Sunday, 11 January 2015 at 04:31:29 UTC, MattCoder wrote:
> Comparing Go and D, but some replies are getting a bit harsh against D! So I'm just posting this to call your attention and maybe some experts could reply there too.

At this moment I only see some popularity comparisons and I think they're generally correct. No matter how much I like D it won't change the fact of Go attracting more users (thanks to its simplicity and more polished runtime and tools).

On Sunday, 11 January 2015 at 06:56:02 UTC, thedeemon wrote:
> At this moment I only see some popularity comparisons

Yes in fact they are talking more about popularity between both languages.

> and I think they're generally correct...

Since I'm relative new here, I want know from you agree with this statement:

"
[–]clay_davis_sheeit 4 points 17 hours ago*

get real. D is more dead now than it was a year ago. if you won't accept repo counts, look at how many people attended D con vs Gophercon
"

Matheus.

On Sunday, 11 January 2015 at 12:57:17 UTC, MattCoder wrote:
> Since I'm relative new here, I want know from you agree with this statement:
>
> "
> [–]clay_davis_sheeit 4 points 17 hours ago*
>
> get real. D is more dead now than it was a year ago. if you won't accept repo counts, look at how many people attended D con vs Gophercon
> "

"more dead" is a very subjective term.

It is "more dead" in the sense that you got @nogc and there was a sense of movement towards getting to a workable memory model, but since then nothing has happend. One step forward, then stagnation.

The Rust team have announced that they are moving towards a non-breaking stability situation within 6 weeks. And they have a working memory model.

Andrei and Walter need to stop focusing on details for a moment and focus more on presenting "a great plan" within 2 months. Meaning stating goals and plans which gives D a direction that developers want and can believe in.

If no clear statements on where D is heading appears in the near future... Well, then I am pretty sure that many of those who prefer D will give Rust a spin when Rust hits 1.0, out of boredom.

Rust is not complete feature wise, but a working memory model and stability is more important than having single inheritance and other convenience features...

So D is not dead, but is currently in a position where it can be hit by both Go and Rust. The space between Rust (system programming) and Go (server programming) is very tiny.

On Sunday, 11 January 2015 at 12:57:17 UTC, MattCoder wrote:
> On Sunday, 11 January 2015 at 06:56:02 UTC, thedeemon wrote:
>> At this moment I only see some popularity comparisons
>
> Yes in fact they are talking more about popularity between both languages.
>
>> and I think they're generally correct...
>
> Since I'm relative new here, I want know from you agree with this statement:
>
> "
> [–]clay_davis_sheeit 4 points 17 hours ago*
>
> get real. D is more dead now than it was a year ago. if you won't accept repo counts, look at how many people attended D con vs Gophercon
> "
>
> Matheus.

That guy has been trolling every D thread in the last year.

Either way, D is definitely way more popular/active than it was a year ago, especially with a large jump around last summer, but not nearly as much as Go nor Rust at the moment. (D << Rust << Go at the moment as far as popularity is concerned).

Reddit seems to have a constant stream of "random project in Go" posts. There was one this week that was a "command line websocket" and it was like 40 lines of code. Come on.

I'm tempted to start posting every little thing I write in D to it too, but it'd just be spam!

On Sunday, 11 January 2015 at 13:37:33 UTC, Ola Fosheim Grøstad wrote:
> On Sunday, 11 January 2015 at 12:57:17 UTC, MattCoder wrote:
>> Since I'm relative new here, I want know from you agree with this statement:
>>
>> "
>> [–]clay_davis_sheeit 4 points 17 hours ago*
>>
>> get real. D is more dead now than it was a year ago. if you won't accept repo counts, look at how many people attended D con vs Gophercon
>> "
>
> "more dead" is a very subjective term.
>
> It is "more dead" in the sense that you got @nogc and there was a sense of movement towards getting to a workable memory model, but since then nothing has happend. One step forward, then stagnation.
>
> The Rust team have announced that they are moving towards a non-breaking stability situation within 6 weeks. And they have a working memory model.
>
> Andrei and Walter need to stop focusing on details for a moment and focus more on presenting "a great plan" within 2 months. Meaning stating goals and plans which gives D a direction that developers want and can believe in.
>
> If no clear statements on where D is heading appears in the near future... Well, then I am pretty sure that many of those who prefer D will give Rust a spin when Rust hits 1.0, out of boredom.
>
> Rust is not complete feature wise, but a working memory model and stability is more important than having single inheritance and other convenience features...
>
> So D is not dead, but is currently in a position where it can be hit by both Go and Rust. The space between Rust (system programming) and Go (server programming) is very tiny.

The problem with Rust and Go is that they only deliver in theory, while D kicks some asses in practice. How?

Eg: at this very moment, D is more stable than Rust, ground truth.

D has backends for GCC/LLVM/custom, Go has backends for GCC / Plan9, Rust only for LLVM. None of Rust+Go can link with binaries produced by eg. the Microsoft compiler. None of them has Visual Studio integration with debugging support and that is pretty important for native and enterprise programmers.

Go is actively behind the times by preventing shared libraries and discouraging exceptions, let alone generics. None of the C++ programmers I know give Go any credit, cause it would make their work more difficult, and it's already pretty difficult.

Despite efforts, Rust don't get syntax right. They will enjoy huge amount of complaining as soon as people actually use the language, only to discover it is not fun enough and fun is more important than "memory safety without GC". Looks like it inherited its boringness from Ocaml.

I don't buy in the Rust team stability guarantees, you can't go from pondering about removing "box" this very week (the syntax is from this year) then promising stability forever starting next month. But for some reason everything they say has a ring of truth, because it's Mozilla they only do Good Things right?

They will come to the same model as D, minimizing code breakage but do it anyway, because it's way more practical. And as soon as Servo is interrupted because of internal politics at Mozilla or rebudgeting (ie. very high probability), Rust will be halted in a heartbeat since loosing its purpose. Ever noticed the Rust original designer jumped off ship long ago?

That won't happen with D, whatever the ratio of github projects in the fashion industry.

On Sunday, 11 January 2015 at 14:03:05 UTC, Adam D. Ruppe wrote:
> Reddit seems to have a constant stream of "random project in Go" posts. There was one this week that was a "command line websocket" and it was like 40 lines of code. Come on.
>
> I'm tempted to start posting every little thing I write in D to it too, but it'd just be spam!

I still think the best one was the stackoverflow comparison.

On Sunday, 11 January 2015 at 14:10:56 UTC, ponce wrote:
> The problem with Rust and Go is that they only deliver in theory, while D kicks some asses in practice. How?
>
> Eg: at this very moment, D is more stable than Rust, ground truth.

I think Rust will hit non-breaking stability (or close to it) because they need it for Servo. What I dislike is that they plan on having a "train-schedule" where they release every 6 weeks because "that model works for browsers". IMO it does not work for browsers. Last week I fixed two browser related bugs, introduced recently by both IE and Chrome. What I want from a programming tool is a stable release that lasts for years, not weeks. Python is at 3.5, yet most people are using Python 2.7, for a reason... In some sense, I think Rust is in a self-indulgent bubble...

On the other hand, Rust has somewhat better semantics than D and a working memory model, for those features that Rust do have. Yet, the syntax is... too alien for most C++ programmers IMO.

Maybe we should do a comparison thread between D and Rust. It might be interesting, and perhaps encourage some improvements to D.

> Go is actively behind the times by preventing shared libraries and discouraging exceptions, let alone generics. None of the C++ programmers I know give Go any credit, cause it would make their work more difficult, and it's already pretty difficult.

Isn't static linking good enough for servers? When using Go with app engine the code is compiled by Google, seems to be a good model if the language is transparently portable. Go is not a system programming language.

> next month. But for some reason everything they say has a ring of truth, because it's Mozilla they only do Good Things right?

No, but you gotta admit that it is an advantage that Mozilla needs the tool for doing real work. So if they make mistakes, they will suffer from it too.

If D was funded for doing real work, then the memory model issues would have been addressed a long time ago.

> They will come to the same model as D, minimizing code breakage but do it anyway, because it's way more practical.

Maybe, but Go has actually done a good job out of it. C was also quite minimal (like Rust), so they might do ok with stability if they make it a "principle".

> And as soon as Servo is interrupted because of internal politics at Mozilla or rebudgeting (ie. very high probability), Rust will be halted in a heartbeat since loosing its purpose. Ever noticed the Rust original designer jumped off ship long ago?

I didn't know that, but I've noticed with some unease that Chrome is growing towards "monopoly" (except in Germany where Firefox is big).

> That won't happen with D, whatever the ratio of github projects in the fashion industry.

Yes, but D depends too much on a single person. Rust and Go does not.