May 09, 2009
Steve Teale wrote:
> D is great. How do we spread that particular perception?

Use it.  Tell people you're using it.  Produce tools, libraries, applications, whatever.. that are interesting enough that people want to know more.

Later,
Brad
May 09, 2009
Steve Teale wrote:
> D is great. How do we spread that particular perception?

All these are free and effective:

Write articles/blogs about your experiences using D.

Submit patches for better D support for gnu tools like gdb.

Give a presentation on D at your local programmers' club meeting.

Submit presentation abstracts on D to conferences.

Read programming articles and if they don't mention D, but should, email the author and point it out.

Make relevant comments about D on programming threads on Reddit, Slashdot, Gamedev.net, stackoverflow, ycombinator, etc.

Promote open source D applications that you or others have written.

Email tool vendors and ask for D support.

Email web sites that have categories for programming languages that don't include D, and ask for a D category.

Improve Wikipedia pages that mention D. Add mention of D to Wikipedia pages that should mention it.
May 09, 2009
Brad Roberts wrote:
> Steve Teale wrote:
>> D is great. How do we spread that particular perception?
> 
> Use it.  Tell people you're using it.  Produce tools, libraries, applications,
> whatever.. that are interesting enough that people want to know more.

Also write about it. Of all programming languages of comparable breadth, D is probably the one that made it with the least (amazingly little) written material.

Andrei
May 09, 2009
Brad Roberts Wrote:

> Steve Teale wrote:
> > D is great. How do we spread that particular perception?
> 
> Use it.  Tell people you're using it.  Produce tools, libraries, applications, whatever.. that are interesting enough that people want to know more.
> 
> Later,
> Brad

    I second this. A great language and compiler is often not enough to get a lot of people interested. Since a parent post mentioned Pascal, look at the Lazarus installer you can download for Windows for example.
    I've already seen a couple of posts in the Netbeans users forum asking for a D plugin, and there is one already for Eclipse.
    People _is_ interested in being more productive and enjoying its work. But developers nowadays take some things for granted, besides the compiler.

    But there are simpler things that could help a lot, IMHO. For example, recent news in the front page, updated regularly. It doesn't need to be big anouncements, minor revisions or community news are ok, just enough to let people know this is moving.
    A small roadmap of completed features, showing reached milestones and future milestones. You don't need to show expected release date for future milestones, but it's nice to show approximate date of completion of already reached milestones. This also helps to give a perception of progress.
    This two should be in the front page or, if not possible, at least in a clearly visible link near the top of front page.

HTH, cheers,

Daniel

May 09, 2009
Brad Roberts Wrote:

> Steve Teale wrote:
> > D is great. How do we spread that particular perception?
> 
> Use it.  Tell people you're using it.  Produce tools, libraries, applications, whatever.. that are interesting enough that people want to know more.
> 
> Later,
> Brad

    I second this. A great language and compiler is often not enough to get a lot of people interested. Since a parent post mentioned Pascal, look at the Lazarus installer you can download for Windows for example.
    I've already seen a couple of posts in the Netbeans users forum asking for a D plugin, and there is one already for Eclipse.
    People _is_ interested in being more productive and enjoying its work. But developers nowadays take some things for granted, besides the compiler.

    But there are simpler things that could help a lot, IMHO. For example, recent news in the front page, updated regularly. It doesn't need to be big anouncements, minor revisions or community news are ok, just enough to let people know this is moving.
    A small roadmap of completed features, showing reached milestones and future milestones. You don't need to show expected release date for future milestones, but it's nice to show approximate date of completion of already reached milestones. This also helps to give a perception of progress.
    This two should be in the front page or, if not possible, at least in a clearly visible link near the top of front page.

HTH, cheers,

Daniel

May 09, 2009
I keep making 2 mistakes in my D programs, and fixing them feels troublesome.

1. Null references. I get a segfault and gdb is useless (ldc thing maybe). 2. Exceptions. It prints the msg nicely, but it's unhelpful in tracing the real cause of error.

Shouldn't there be an automatic null check for references and stack traces? Sometimes I think I'm using the wrong tool as others have solutions for these.
May 09, 2009
"mpt" <mpt@ikikiki.fi> wrote in message news:gu4unq$16e2$1@digitalmars.com...
>I keep making 2 mistakes in my D programs, and fixing them feels
> troublesome.
>
> 1. Null references. I get a segfault and gdb is useless (ldc thing maybe). 2. Exceptions. It prints the msg nicely, but it's unhelpful in tracing the real cause of error.
>
> Shouldn't there be an automatic null check for references and stack traces? Sometimes I think I'm using the wrong tool as others have solutions for these.

These are two very common complaints, and there has been a lot of disussion about both. Hopefully they'll get taken care of.


May 09, 2009
"Nick Sabalausky" <a@a.a> wrote in message news:gu51vu$1e2f$1@digitalmars.com...
> "mpt" <mpt@ikikiki.fi> wrote in message news:gu4unq$16e2$1@digitalmars.com...
>>I keep making 2 mistakes in my D programs, and fixing them feels
>> troublesome.
>>
>> 1. Null references. I get a segfault and gdb is useless (ldc thing
>> maybe).
>> 2. Exceptions. It prints the msg nicely, but it's unhelpful in tracing
>> the real cause of error.
>>
>> Shouldn't there be an automatic null check for references and stack traces? Sometimes I think I'm using the wrong tool as others have solutions for these.
>
> These are two very common complaints, and there has been a lot of disussion about both. Hopefully they'll get taken care of.
>

To elaborate:

Pretty much everyone agrees we need stack traces on exceptions. I'm actually kind of surprised DMD still doesn't have them, I wouldn't think it would be a real major change (at least compared to some other things). IIRC, I think the Linux LDC already has this feature.

About the null references, most people seem to agree that the right way to fix that is with some sort of "non-nullable". But there's a lot of disagreement on exactly how non-nullables should work.


May 09, 2009
On Sun, May 10, 2009 at 12:05 AM, mpt <mpt@ikikiki.fi> wrote:
> I keep making 2 mistakes in my D programs, and fixing them feels troublesome.
>
> 1. Null references. I get a segfault and gdb is useless (ldc thing maybe).

Useless how? Generally LDC debug info should be decent. If not, we'd be glad to look into why that is!

> 2. Exceptions. It prints the msg nicely, but it's unhelpful in tracing the real cause of error.
>
> Shouldn't there be an automatic null check for references and stack traces? Sometimes I think I'm using the wrong tool as others have solutions for these.
>
May 10, 2009
On 10.05.2009 00:05, mpt wrote:
> I keep making 2 mistakes in my D programs, and fixing them feels
> troublesome.
>
> 1. Null references. I get a segfault and gdb is useless (ldc thing maybe).
> 2. Exceptions. It prints the msg nicely, but it's unhelpful in tracing
> the real cause of error.
>
> Shouldn't there be an automatic null check for references and stack
> traces? Sometimes I think I'm using the wrong tool as others have
> solutions for these.

Tango trunk has stacktrace functionality for both Windows and linux I think.  There's also a Phobos backtrace patch.