On Thursday, 21 November 2013 at 16:23:07 UTC, Andrei
Alexandrescu wrote:
> Each language has its story, but it's undeniable that corporate sponsorship offers a lot of liftoff.

I think books for some new language being available is also an
important factor. It tells people that some language has already
received some attention and an investment in that new language is
less likely to be in vain.

I remember that Scala received a lot of attention in my Java
community when the Scala book by Martin Odersky was published.
Last week Dart went 1.0. You can already now buy 4 books about
it, one from a renowned author such as Gilad Braha.

I think the book about D by Andrei was very important and it
would be a good thing if during the years more books about D
would follow.

-- Bienlein

22-Nov-2013 02:17, bearophile пишет:
> Andrei Alexandrescu:
>
>> At this point focusing on making D solid and reliable is the best
>> thing to do.
>
> At this point what's important is to perform the small breaking changes
> that are left to do (and deprecate what needs to be deprecated), because
> doing that even later will be a problem.
>

Spot on, +1  from me.

> Bye,
> bearophile


-- 
Dmitry Olshansky

On Thursday, 21 November 2013 at 22:17:07 UTC, bearophile wrote:
> Andrei Alexandrescu:
>
>> At this point focusing on making D solid and reliable is the best thing to do.
>

> changes that are left to do

@property

int[$] x=[1,2,3];

On 2013-11-22 09:56, eles wrote:

> int[$] x=[1,2,3];

This would hopefully not be a braking change. The dollar sign can't be used like that currently?

-- 
/Jacob Carlborg

On Thursday, 21 November 2013 at 16:23:07 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
> On 11/21/13 7:31 AM, Chris wrote:
>>> Luckily we can now point to Facebook as possible corporate sponsor.
>>
>> But that's post-factum. The language already happily exists outside the
>> corporate sphere, unlike Java that was a product from the very beginning.
>
> Each language has its story, but it's undeniable that corporate sponsorship offers a lot of liftoff. Back in 2010 (I think) a highly influential manager at Facebook said "I'd much more support use of Go than D at Facebook because Go has Google behind it." That was an assessment based exclusively on social proof, before (and instead of) any technical argument. Fortunately a lot has changed since :o).
>
>
> Andrei

Yes, yes, yes. You are of course right that corporate backing gives a language a boost, even if it's a mediocre language. But as soon as corporate thinking comes into a language (profit, ideology, branding, hype and whatnot), it's doomed. D has to breathe, and I admire all the people who have made D happen, and who are making it happen. I've learned a lot just by listening (well, reading).

On Friday, 22 November 2013 at 10:29:35 UTC, Chris wrote:
> Yes, yes, yes. You are of course right that corporate backing gives a language a boost, even if it's a mediocre language. But as soon as corporate thinking comes into a language (profit, ideology, branding, hype and whatnot), it's doomed. D has to breathe, and I admire all the people who have made D happen, and who are making it happen. I've learned a lot just by listening (well, reading).

You're talking about corporate _management_ rather than corporate backing.  The former can obviously lead to problems (though it doesn't have to) -- the latter is almost invariably good, as it means there's someone who can serve as guarantor that any necessary work will get done.

On Friday, 22 November 2013 at 12:34:23 UTC, Joseph Rushton Wakeling wrote:
> On Friday, 22 November 2013 at 10:29:35 UTC, Chris wrote:
>> Yes, yes, yes. You are of course right that corporate backing gives a language a boost, even if it's a mediocre language. But as soon as corporate thinking comes into a language (profit, ideology, branding, hype and whatnot), it's doomed. D has to breathe, and I admire all the people who have made D happen, and who are making it happen. I've learned a lot just by listening (well, reading).
>
> You're talking about corporate _management_ rather than corporate backing.  The former can obviously lead to problems (though it doesn't have to) -- the latter is almost invariably good, as it means there's someone who can serve as guarantor that any necessary work will get done.

You cannot separate the two. Management will creep into development sooner or later. E.g. one day D might implement features that have to do with what Facebook needs more than features that programmers need in general. So a module std.webshite.upload.latest.picture gets all the attention while std.reallyhandy is being neglected.

On Friday, 22 November 2013 at 13:22:10 UTC, Chris wrote:
> You cannot separate the two. Management will creep into development sooner or later. E.g. one day D might implement features that have to do with what Facebook needs more than features that programmers need in general. So a module std.webshite.upload.latest.picture gets all the attention while std.reallyhandy is being neglected.

Attention of and negclection from the people payed by facebook.

Chris wrote:

> E.g. one day D might implement features that have to do with what Facebook needs more than features that programmers need in general. So a module std.webshite.upload.latest.picture gets all the attention while std.reallyhandy is being neglected.

Do you know one or two cases where this phenomenon has happened to a language?

Bye,
bearophile

On 11/21/13 6:36 PM, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
> On 11/21/13 1:16 PM, Gary Willoughby wrote:
>> On Thursday, 21 November 2013 at 16:23:07 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
>>> Fortunately a lot has changed since :o).
>>
>> Please, do tell. ;)
>
> Not much that people don't know already. We have one solid D project
> installed and a couple of heavy-hitting engineers have started using D
> for scripts and tools (e.g. replacing Python for a 2x speedup for the
> same source code size/complexity).

I would have expected a lot more speedup than just 2x, D being a compiled language.