On Friday, 23 June 2017 at 07:44:36 UTC, Ecstatic Coder wrote:
>> Huh? You were asked about concrete action points that in your PoV would improve dlang.org. You can't just say "make it (like) python.org" ;-)
>> Could you maybe try to be a bit preciser and create a more detailed lists of points on how you would improve dlang.org?
>
> Sorry I can't.
>
> Make it look more like "python.org" is just and exactly what I mean.
>
> For instance, D is the only scripting language I would use nowadays.
>
> BUT I would not take the risk to use D instead of C++ to develop games for instance.
>
> D is actually quite easy to sell a scripting language.
>
> Convincing people to use D instead of C, C++, Java or C# is another thing.
>
> In my personal case, selling D as a better alternative to Python, JavaScript or Ruby would have just needed a well chosen snippet of simple code, which shows me that indeed D is some kind of strongly-typed JavaScript, à la TypeScript, which is both easy to learn and use.
>
> And I believe that "python.org" is currently more convincing for "low-profile" programmers/scripters than "dlang.org".
>
> Just look at the code snippets...

Problem is, low profile programmers aren't the most interesting target for D right now. You have to choose your battles and I believe that isn't done enough in D marketing. For example we have lots of issues promoting the GC because we want to attract people that like that kind of memory management and at the same time people that don't. So we end up saying "yeah, we have a GC, but you can do things without it" and the same question comes over and over again "make up your mind, is it possible or not to code in D without GC?".

Right now the marketing targets companies and C++ programmers. Maybe that's not the way to go but it's the path that was choosen until now. To those programmers the message our marketing tries to send is "D is a serious, solid language that gives you the power to build industry software". It's all about being a rock: solid, sturdy, there to stay for years to come. Of course on side channels we talk about it being also a good scripting language etc, but that's not the main image. An image of scripting language is likely to make D loose most of its credibility amongst C++ groups (I may be wrong about it but it's the impression I get).

What you're proposing is way more than a website modification, it's a profound marketting change. Maybe it's the right way to go, but if that's what you want you may want to rethink your whole approach with the fact that it's not about dlang.org's cosmetic anymore.

> Problem is, low profile programmers aren't the most interesting target for D right now. You have to choose your battles and I believe that isn't done enough in D marketing. For example we have lots of issues promoting the GC because we want to attract people that like that kind of memory management and at the same time people that don't. So we end up saying "yeah, we have a GC, but you can do things without it" and the same question comes over and over again "make up your mind, is it possible or not to code in D without GC?".
>
> Right now the marketing targets companies and C++ programmers. Maybe that's not the way to go but it's the path that was choosen until now. To those programmers the message our marketing tries to send is "D is a serious, solid language that gives you the power to build industry software". It's all about being a rock: solid, sturdy, there to stay for years to come. Of course on side channels we talk about it being also a good scripting language etc, but that's not the main image. An image of scripting language is likely to make D loose most of its credibility amongst C++ groups (I may be wrong about it but it's the impression I get).
>
> What you're proposing is way more than a website modification, it's a profound marketting change. Maybe it's the right way to go, but if that's what you want you may want to rethink your whole approach with the fact that it's not about dlang.org's cosmetic anymore.

Ok no problem, I understand your point :)

Indeed the current website conveys quite well the "serious C++-like language for the software industry" concept.

Unfortunately it's not an easy task to convince people to use D instead of Java, C#, Go, C++, etc

There are much more risks involved in deciding to adopt a new language when it's for people's core business.

Same reasons why I'm still using C++ and Go professionally btw, and I'm sorry for that...

On Friday, 23 June 2017 at 08:29:33 UTC, cym13 wrote:
> On Friday, 23 June 2017 at 07:44:36 UTC, Ecstatic Coder wrote:
>>> Huh? You were asked about concrete action points that in your PoV would improve dlang.org. You can't just say "make it
[...]
>
> Problem is, low profile programmers aren't the most interesting target for D right now....
[...]
Two ideas:
A) place a changing slogan (like the changing code snippets) with
short arguments - sometimes a joke or. comic from the community.

Examples:

I think that I can safely say that nobody understands C++ template mechanics.
 (From the "famous" Richard Deyman https://dlang.org/spec/template.html)


Memory safety will kill C.
Walter Bright Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lo6Q2vB9AAg&t=24m15s



The Evolution of Programmers:
:C
:C++
:D

(From the Forum + Alis talk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vYEKEIpM2zo)


Time is Money - Time is live ... Manu... (please make it complete)



80%-90% of the web is based on interpreting languages, is there no alternative to this waste of CPU, Time and Energy?  Vibe.d !
https://w3techs.com/technologies/details/pl-php/all/all
http://vibed.org/
EmTee

B) Idea please think about an explain flag / link beside the code examples,
because if you don't know the foo!baz(value) syntax.
The ! is uncommon, I first thought it is like in the "gsub!" expression in ruby...
but could not bring it together...:-)

On Friday, 23 June 2017 at 09:02:30 UTC, Ecstatic Coder wrote:
> Indeed the current website conveys quite well the "serious C++-like language for the software industry" concept.
>
> Unfortunately it's not an easy task to convince people to use D instead of Java, C#, Go, C++, etc
>
> There are much more risks involved in deciding to adopt a new language when it's for people's core business.
>
> Same reasons why I'm still using C++ and Go professionally btw, and I'm sorry for that...

The issue goes a bit beyond just the marketing.

Somebody posted on Reddit a few days ago, that D can be used for a lot of different fields. From system programming to web development etc ... But the reality is a bit different.

If you want web development you need to write your own framework or rely on 3th party solutions like vibe.d ( that means you actually need to discover about vibe.d ).

While D is a perfectly capable language that is useful for low profile programmers. Any PHP developer can work with D language easily, its things that are not the language is where it gets troublesome.

Case and point:

You can install Go and get a HTTP server up and going withing a few minutes.

D can not do the same ( even with vibe.d ). Third party packages require knowing about dub. It requires knowing about the package system. It takes more steps then Go.

It actually requires some major commitment to D for people to learn the surrounding tools, 3th party solutions, finding a proper working editor ( if you want all the bells )  etc.

I understand your point but there seems to be no real support among the current D developers / users. Unless you consider the "write it yourself" as support. ;)

D can get much more "low profile programmers". But we need to differ between the language and the actual eco system. And its the eco system that has the bigger learning curve to get into D, especially when people are coming with a PHP/Python/Ruby background.

> The issue goes a bit beyond just the marketing.
>
> Somebody posted on Reddit a few days ago, that D can be used for a lot of different fields. From system programming to web development etc ... But the reality is a bit different.
>
> If you want web development you need to write your own framework or rely on 3th party solutions like vibe.d ( that means you actually need to discover about vibe.d ).
>
> While D is a perfectly capable language that is useful for low profile programmers. Any PHP developer can work with D language easily, its things that are not the language is where it gets troublesome.
>
> Case and point:
>
> You can install Go and get a HTTP server up and going withing a few minutes.
>
> D can not do the same ( even with vibe.d ). Third party packages require knowing about dub. It requires knowing about the package system. It takes more steps then Go.
>
> It actually requires some major commitment to D for people to learn the surrounding tools, 3th party solutions, finding a proper working editor ( if you want all the bells )  etc.
>
> I understand your point but there seems to be no real support among the current D developers / users. Unless you consider the "write it yourself" as support. ;)
>
> D can get much more "low profile programmers". But we need to differ between the language and the actual eco system. And its the eco system that has the bigger learning curve to get into D, especially when people are coming with a PHP/Python/Ruby background.

I completely agree with you !

Most JS/PHP programmers should immediately feel at home when starting to use D.

And right out of the box, D is fully equiped to develop Perl-like file processing scripts, there is nothing more to download or install to get started.

But for the remaining, unfortunately this is not as easy, and this requires some efforts before being able to develop web or GUI applications.

That's why I'm in favor of adapting some thirdparty librairies so they become pre-installed standard librairies (std.web, std.ui, etc).

On 06/23/2017 08:49 AM, Ecstatic Coder wrote:
> 1/ it's not especially obvious that D is also an easy to learn scripting language.

Ok, I think I understand your goal now.

There's a thing that I'd like to change on the home page, and I think it aligns with your thoughts: "D is a systems programming language" -> "D is a general-purpose programming language".

"Systems programming" puts the focus on the low-level side of D, which may not even be its strong side (yet) if one looks at the recent -betterC efforts.

"Systems programming" may scare users away who think they're not good enough for that kind of programming.

"General-purpose programming" is a better fit, in my opinion.

Regarding the examples, I'd prefer very simple ones, too. Hello World, 99 Bottles of Beer -- stuff like that. I think there's the idea that examples should show some cool feature of D, but I'd say they should just show how D looks with easy-to-follow code. Maybe have a distinct page with cooler examples.

So, overall, I think dlang.org could be tweaked to be more directed at newbie programmers, and I wouldn't mind that. I don't think it would need a major overhaul of the site; just some tweaks. But personally, I'm not really interested in the marketing of D, so I'm not going to push for these things.

On Friday, 23 June 2017 at 13:43:00 UTC, ag0aep6g wrote:
> On 06/23/2017 08:49 AM, Ecstatic Coder wrote:
>> 1/ it's not especially obvious that D is also an easy to learn scripting language.
>
> Ok, I think I understand your goal now.
>
> There's a thing that I'd like to change on the home page, and I think it aligns with your thoughts: "D is a systems programming language" -> "D is a general-purpose programming language".
>
> "Systems programming" puts the focus on the low-level side of D, which may not even be its strong side (yet) if one looks at the recent -betterC efforts.
>
> "Systems programming" may scare users away who think they're not good enough for that kind of programming.
>
> "General-purpose programming" is a better fit, in my opinion.
>
> Regarding the examples, I'd prefer very simple ones, too. Hello World, 99 Bottles of Beer -- stuff like that. I think there's the idea that examples should show some cool feature of D, but I'd say they should just show how D looks with easy-to-follow code. Maybe have a distinct page with cooler examples.
>
> So, overall, I think dlang.org could be tweaked to be more directed at newbie programmers, and I wouldn't mind that. I don't think it would need a major overhaul of the site; just some tweaks. But personally, I'm not really interested in the marketing of D, so I'm not going to push for these things.

+1 :)

On Friday, 23 June 2017 at 13:29:29 UTC, Ecstatic Coder wrote:
>
> That's why I'm in favor of adapting some thirdparty librairies so they become pre-installed standard librairies (std.web, std.ui, etc).

Will not happen. I read too many threads already where this was mentioned and it always got shot down. From coding styles, to maintainers etc ...

I have always been a believer that a good system has the most used technology as its core library, so the developers are sure that this tech will be supported. But between believing in something and reality, there are major differences.

Lets assume vibe.d does not get supported anymore or simply updates take longer and longer. When its a 3th party library, one can kick and scream but nothing will change this. As a core library, you expect there to be is a sense of responsibility and also more usage, that can justify having more maintainers.

But one only need to look at the std.xml library. And the std.experimental modules that got stuck there for years ( what demotivates the developers ).

The issue is and will always be that 3th party modules are more in danger that the main developer will lose interest or has too much work in his private life. Unfortunately, D has only so may core developers so you have the same issue on the std library.

Maybe i am the crazy guy but i prefer to write my own functionality. Maybe take inspiration from how other people solve the issues but only focusing on what i need. Its not efficient but it bypasses the whole 3th party issue. One does not need to learn a new style, you know the code in and out ...

On Friday, 23 June 2017 at 13:29:29 UTC, Ecstatic Coder wrote:
> But for the remaining, unfortunately this is not as easy, and this requires some efforts before being able to develop web or GUI applications.

I'm kinda tempted to offer a pre-packaged compiler download with my libs and some other useful stuff. PHP has done that before, with the LAMP packages.

And now that dmd is fully Boost, there's no legal barrier, but I question if it is really worth it because someone could just download the files themselves easily enough.

But still, the compiler+libs+samples and docs and maybe one of the ides could be kinda useful.

On Friday, 23 June 2017 at 13:43:00 UTC, ag0aep6g wrote:
> On 06/23/2017 08:49 AM, Ecstatic Coder wrote:
>
> "Systems programming" may scare users away who think they're not good enough for that kind of programming.

True.

>
> "General-purpose programming" is a better fit, in my opinion.
>
In mine too.

What does system porgramming even mean? System without qualifier is as wobbly a term as thing or stuff. System as in operating system, or system as desktop system, or dabase system or web system or, you get the idea, everything can be called a system.
Furthermore, as operating system language, D is not even that appropriate as it requires really a lot from the platform it's implemented in: >=32bits, stack, memory protection (or else no TLS), etc.

So calling it General-purpose is really something to get behind.