1. Why your company uses  D?

  a. D is the best
  b. We like D
  c. I like D and my company allowed me to use D
  d. My head like D
  e. Because marketing reasons
  f. Because my company can be more efficient with D for some tasks then with any other system language

2. Does your company uses C/C++, Java, Scala, Go, Rust?

3. If yes, what the reasons to do not use D instead?

2. Have you use one of the following Mir projects in production:

  a. https://github.com/libmir/mir
  b. https://github.com/libmir/mir-algorithm
  c. https://github.com/libmir/mir-cpuid
  d. https://github.com/libmir/mir-random
  e. https://github.com/libmir/dcv - D Computer Vision Library
  f. std.experimental.ndslice

3. If Yes, can Mir community use your company's logo in a section "Used by" or similar.

4. Have you use one of the following Tamedia projects in your production:

  a. https://github.com/tamediadigital/asdf
  b. https://github.com/tamediadigital/je
  c. https://github.com/tamediadigital/lincount

5. What D misses to be commercially successful languages?

6. Why many topnotch system projects use C programming language nowadays?

=========================

All my current D project are finished. Probably I will use other languages for production this year, Java/Go/whatever. Mir libraries are amazing and good quality. If you use them this would be a good motivation for us to improve the docs and provide regular updates. Plus, it can be enchanted during the GSoC 2017.

Thanks,
Ilya

> Plus, it can be enchanted during the GSoC 2017.

EDIT: enhanced

On 02/08/2017 01:27 PM, Ilya Yaroshenko wrote:
> 1. Why your company uses  D?
>
>    a. D is the best
>    b. We like D
>    c. I like D and my company allowed me to use D
>    d. My head like D
>    e. Because marketing reasons
>    f. Because my company can be more efficient with D for some tasks
> then with any other system language

x. Because I'm self-employed so I get to choose the best tool for the job instead of whatever some know-nothing manager thinks "must be good because its popular". Also, all of the above.

> 2. Does your company uses C/C++, Java, Scala, Go, Rust?

Not when I can help it.

> 3. If yes, what the reasons to do not use D instead?

If, for whatever reason, my hands are tied and it's just not a possibility. Usually platform/framework compatibility. Or somebody above me deciding "You must use language X". (But, after having had more than enough PHP/VB/Java/C++/Python/etc in my life, I'm more inclined now to simply avoid situations that would involve such restraints. Life's too short to suffer bad tools for bad reasons.)

> 2. Have you use one of the following Mir projects in production:

No. I keep hearing about Mir, but still haven't quite wrapped my head around what it is, or how/where to use it. (and that bugs me)

> 3. If Yes, can Mir community use your company's logo in a section "Used
> by" or similar.

N/A

> 4. Have you use one of the following Tamedia projects in your production:
>
>    a. https://github.com/tamediadigital/asdf
>    b. https://github.com/tamediadigital/je
>    c. https://github.com/tamediadigital/lincount

First I've heard of them. I'll take a look.

> 5. What D misses to be commercially successful languages?

A groupthink mentality and loads of bad ideas and broken reasoning. Ie, the basic requirements for anything to be popular in the computing arena.

Seriously. I'm not joking.

Well, that and, nobody's ever really been in a situation where they're more or less FORCED to use D. Many, heck probably most, big-name languages got big because there were enough people who didn't have much of a choice:

- Earlier days of Unix/Linux dev? Hard to avoid C/C++.
- Work for a company that's heavily invested in MS tools? Hard to avoid VB (90's) or C# (2000's).
- Work for a non-MS-based enterprise? Hard to avoid Java, because that's what the higher-ups had already been sold on.
- Need to use a relational DB? SQL, period.
- Need client-side scripting on a web page? JavaScript, period (until just recently).
- If you wanted an MVC web framework, for a short while Ruby was the only choice. I guarantee Ruby would be more popular today if that time period had been longer. It's undeniable nobody would've ever heard of Ruby were it not for Rails.
- Need to run something on an affordable commodity server in the late 90's/2000's? PHP, period. Unless you paid an extra $5-$10/mo. and restricted your choice of providers - then you could use VBScript/ASP, which was basically the same exact thing as PHP, but just incompatible.
- Need low-level hardware access, memory management or other direct control over performance and resource usage? Until recently, had to be C/C++.

Then once onboard, stockholm syndrome sets in. Instant popularity.

Coercion (and perceived coercion[1] for that matter) makes technologies popular far more than any other factor. The computing sector is NOT a meritocracy, not by a longshot. That right there is D's #1 biggest marketing flaw, period. If you nail that coercion part, it doesn't matter HOW badly you do on any other technical or marketing aspect. Been proven time and time again. And if you DON'T have that coercion, you face an uphill battle no matter how good you do on technical and marketing fronts. Also been proven time and time again.

[1] The "I must keep up or get left behind" thought train. See also "Cover Fire" and the Fire and Motion stuff here: https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2002/01/06/fire-and-motion/

> 6. Why many topnotch system projects use C programming language nowadays?

Partly inertia, but also because there was a decade or two (that only ended a few years ago) where nearly all language designers obsessed over VMs and eliminating low-level capabilities, and in general dumbing down their languages to the point of uselessness for anyone but novices, hobbyists, and those who could afford to throw money/hardware at any and all performance/resource/scalability issues[2]. Because of that, for many C/C++ users, there simply was no realistic alternative, period.

[2] I'm sure 90's Sun LOVED their JVM/Java - it virtually guaranteed "optimization" could only mean "rent/buy more hardware" - Everything else besides reducing algorithmic complexity was deliberately banned by both the language and the VM...as a self-proclaimed "feature" no less. That "feature" allegedly being for safety, but decades of security patches and exploits for every VM on the planet proved that to be a load of...male cow.

On Wednesday, 8 February 2017 at 18:27:57 UTC, Ilya Yaroshenko wrote:
> 1. Why your company uses  D?

We don't use D.

> 2. Does your company uses C/C++, Java, Scala, Go, Rust?

C/C++.  Currently exploring Rust.

> 3. If yes, what the reasons to do not use D instead?

* The powers that be in my company are the kind of C programmers that can't understand why anyone would want to use C++ (i.e. Electrical engineers that write software).  Suggesting D would be an exercise in futility, unless I can create a notable project in D in my spare time that demonstrates its advantages and appeal to the masses.  I tried to do this 2 years ago, but D failed me, primarily due to https://issues.dlang.org/show_bug.cgi?id=14758

* Our customers don't use D.  Some of our products are libraries and tools that our customers use.  It doesn't make sense to program them in D if our customers don't use D.  Though, if D had a minimal runtime, we could write them in D and distribute them with bindings to other languages.

* For us, binary size efficiency and minimal runtime are important features.  D is not pay-as-you-go; many heavy-weight features are opt-out instead of opt-in.  In contrast Rust has "minimal runtime" as one of its pillars making it a much better alternative language choice for us than D.

> 2. Have you use one of the following Mir projects in production:

No

> 3. If Yes, can Mir community use your company's logo in a section "Used by" or similar.

N/A

> 4. Have you use one of the following Tamedia projects in your production:

No

> 5. What D misses to be commercially successful languages?

I believe D has the potential to bury all other emerging languages out there, but only if it drops its historical baggage.  At the moment, I'm of the opinion that D will remain an obscure language until someone forks D and takes it in a different direction (unlikely), or the D Foundation decides to "reboot" and start working on D3 with a new, updated perspective (more unlikely).

> 6. Why many topnotch system projects use C programming language nowadays?

Which topnotch system projects?

* C is the lowest common denominator.  All modern languages that I'm aware of can interface with C.  If one wants to write a library for mass adoption, the best way to do so is to write it in C and create bindings for other languages.  D could be a good substitute for this if it had a "minimal runtime" philosophy.

* C is a simple, efficient, and powerful language.  Some equate language complexity and heavy runtimes to bloat and inefficiency.  Some see too much language complexity as an impediment to productivity.  C creates the appearance of simplicity with efficiency.

* "Minimal Runtime" is the building block of systems programming.  If this is not a core feature of a language, it will never compete with C.  Systems programmers in my field need to incrementally opt-in to features in a pay-as-you-go fashion to make precise tradeoffs for their unique requirements and hardware platforms.  Rust is the only modern language that I'm aware of that's getting this right.

* You may also be interested Dan Sak's recent talk "extern c: Talking to C Programmers about C++": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D7Sd8A6_fYU&t=2631s

On Wednesday, 8 February 2017 at 21:41:24 UTC, Mike wrote:
> Suggesting D would be an exercise in futility, unless I can create a notable project in D in my spare time that demonstrates its advantages and appeal to the masses.  I tried to do this 2 years ago, but D failed me, primarily due to https://issues.dlang.org/show_bug.cgi?id=14758

I read this comment from you on another thread too, and (caveat: I'm not working in such resource constrained domains as you are) it seems sensible. It seems like it may be a good GSOC project to modify dmd as you suggest elsewhere. Have you considered trying to find someone to do that?

> I believe D has the potential to bury all other emerging languages out there, but only if it drops its historical baggage.
>  At the moment, I'm of the opinion that D will remain an obscure language until someone forks D and takes it in a different direction (unlikely), or the D Foundation decides to "reboot" and start working on D3 with a new, updated perspective (more unlikely).

I'd love to see a D3, but that seems unlikely, and more unlikely if D2 languishes. It seems though that your issues are with the implementation, not the language itself, so if you got your wishes below

> Instead I suggest following through on things like
> https://issues.dlang.org/show_bug.cgi?id=12270 and considering this proposal
> (http://forum.dlang.org/post/psssnzurlzeqeneagora@forum.dlang.org) instead.

wouldn't you be mostly satisfied with D2?

On Wednesday, 8 February 2017 at 18:27:57 UTC, Ilya Yaroshenko wrote:
> All my current D project are finished. Probably I will use other languages for production this year, Java/Go/whatever.

Noooo...

I Guess I'll have to try to convince you to help with DCompute once the necessary compiler stuff gets merged into LDC.

On Wednesday, 8 February 2017 at 22:52:36 UTC, bpr wrote:
> On Wednesday, 8 February 2017 at 21:41:24 UTC, Mike wrote:
>> Suggesting D would be an exercise in futility, unless I can create a notable project in D in my spare time that demonstrates its advantages and appeal to the masses.  I tried to do this 2 years ago, but D failed me, primarily due to https://issues.dlang.org/show_bug.cgi?id=14758
>
> I read this comment from you on another thread too, and (caveat: I'm not working in such resource constrained domains as you are) it seems sensible. It seems like it may be a good GSOC project to modify dmd as you suggest elsewhere. Have you considered trying to find someone to do that?

First, for that to happen, the D leadership would need to chime in with a plan on how they want to address this problem.  Second, for me to allocate any more of my resources, I'd have to be convinced that their plan is a good solution to the problem.  A -betterC switch is not at all attractive to me.

I think the D leadership are too busy addressing broader issues with the language at the moment, so this specific case is just not a high priority.  Also, if it's not a priority to the them, then anyone that does attempt to work on it will just suffer an eternity in pull request purgatory.

So, I would not recommend it as a project for anyone until the D leadership decides to get involved.

> I'd love to see a D3, but that seems unlikely, and more unlikely if D2 languishes. It seems though that your issues are with the implementation, not the language itself, so if you got your wishes below
>
>> Instead I suggest following through on things like
>> https://issues.dlang.org/show_bug.cgi?id=12270 and considering this proposal
>> (http://forum.dlang.org/post/psssnzurlzeqeneagora@forum.dlang.org) instead.
>
> wouldn't you be mostly satisfied with D2?

Correct, my issue is not really with the language, but with its implementation.

Resolving issue 12270 and implementing my proposal for decoupling the compiler and druntime would prompt me to further explore D.

I'd also like to see how the recent DIP25 and DIP1000 could be leveraged.  I'm looking forward to an article on the topic, or Walter's talk at DConf2017 before I dedicate any of my time to it.  At first glance, however, it seems like a lot of attribute patchwork.

It's become apparent to me that D just hasn't been designed with bare-metal systems programming in mind, so I'm skeptical that even if issue 12270 and my decoupling proposal were implemented, I'd still run into other disappointments.   But I'd at least be willing to give it another try, and would be thrilled to be proven wrong.

Mike

On Wednesday, 8 February 2017 at 18:27:57 UTC, Ilya Yaroshenko wrote:
> 1. Why your company uses  D?
>
>   a. D is the best
>   b. We like D
>   c. I like D and my company allowed me to use D
>   d. My head like D
>   e. Because marketing reasons
>   f. Because my company can be more efficient with D for some tasks then with any other system language

I use D only privately so far.

>
> 2. Does your company uses C/C++, Java, Scala, Go, Rust?

I've seen C, C++, and Java being used.

>
> 3. If yes, what the reasons to do not use D instead?

Nobody ever heard of the language (this holds true pretty much in every discussion I have on the topic)

>
> 2. Have you use one of the following Mir projects in production:
>
>   a. https://github.com/libmir/mir
>   b. https://github.com/libmir/mir-algorithm
>   c. https://github.com/libmir/mir-cpuid
>   d. https://github.com/libmir/mir-random
>   e. https://github.com/libmir/dcv - D Computer Vision Library
>   f. std.experimental.ndslice
>

No.

> 3. If Yes, can Mir community use your company's logo in a section "Used by" or similar.
>

N/A

> 4. Have you use one of the following Tamedia projects in your production:
>
>   a. https://github.com/tamediadigital/asdf
>   b. https://github.com/tamediadigital/je
>   c. https://github.com/tamediadigital/lincount
>

I've used asdf for configuration files[1][2], it works very well for shortening development time.

> 5. What D misses to be commercially successful languages?

My two cents:
- "Name" backing by a well-known (i.e. internationally famous) corporation/foundation
- Viral marketing ("spread the D")
- Fix or removal of all the little things that may make someone go "ugh, wtf?". I'm looking at you, `shared`, and your missing memory barriers[5], or you, `std.parallelism.taskPool`, and your non-daemon "daemon" threads[6]. Privately I can work around them since it's my own time, but I don't expect many people in big companies (see first point) with a deadline to want to put up with that.
- Tooling, though that's been getting better
- Phobos without GC (where possible)
- std.experimental.allocator -> std.allocator and promote it as *the* memory management interface for D. Seriously. With it I can even allocate and pass delegates to C in an intuitive way (see [3] and [4]).

>
> 6. Why many topnotch system projects use C programming language nowadays?

Don't know if the premise holds, but if it does I'd wager it's because people who *do* write topnotch (system) software can do so in *any* (system) language that's asked of them - since in the end the topnotch comes from the person writing the code, not the language ("ignorance (of a language) can be remedied, stupid is forever") - and C has the de facto corporate monopoly of being asked to write in.


[1] https://git.ucworks.org/UCWorks/dagobar/tree/master
[2] https://git.ucworks.org/UCWorks/tunneled/tree/master
[3] https://git.ucworks.org/UCWorks/dagobar/blob/master/source/libuv.d#L125
[4] https://git.ucworks.org/UCWorks/dagobar/blob/master/source/libuv.d#L159
[5] https://dlang.org/faq.html#shared_guarantees
[6] https://issues.dlang.org/show_bug.cgi?id=16324

On Wednesday, 8 February 2017 at 18:27:57 UTC, Ilya Yaroshenko wrote:
> 1. Why your company uses  D?
>
>   a. D is the best
>   b. We like D
>   c. I like D and my company allowed me to use D
>   d. My head like D
>   e. Because marketing reasons
>   f. Because my company can be more efficient with D for some tasks then with any other system language
>
a,d
> 2. Does your company uses C/C++, Java, Scala, Go, Rust?
>
We use the C++ alaso.  we have C++ for writeing the Client by Qt.

> 3. If yes, what the reasons to do not use D instead?
>
No reasons to use D instead.

> 2. Have you use one of the following Mir projects in production:
>
>   a. https://github.com/libmir/mir
>   b. https://github.com/libmir/mir-algorithm
>   c. https://github.com/libmir/mir-cpuid
>   d. https://github.com/libmir/mir-random
>   e. https://github.com/libmir/dcv - D Computer Vision Library
>   f. std.experimental.ndslice
>
No.
> 3. If Yes, can Mir community use your company's logo in a section "Used by" or similar.
>
> 4. Have you use one of the following Tamedia projects in your production:
>
>   a. https://github.com/tamediadigital/asdf
>   b. https://github.com/tamediadigital/je
>   c. https://github.com/tamediadigital/lincount
>
a, we use the asdf in hunt.

> 5. What D misses to be commercially successful languages?
>
Not has  distinct orientation。 and update slow。

> 6. Why many topnotch system projects use C programming language nowadays?
>
The GC。 and if not GC , D only has a little.

I'm not going to fill out the questionnaire because I'm not at a company and have not tried Mir, but two points about what Nick and Mike wrote.

On Wednesday, 8 February 2017 at 20:40:48 UTC, Nick Sabalausky wrote:
> Coercion (and perceived coercion[1] for that matter) makes technologies popular far more than any other factor. The computing sector is NOT a meritocracy, not by a longshot. That right there is D's #1 biggest marketing flaw, period. If you nail that coercion part, it doesn't matter HOW badly you do on any other technical or marketing aspect. Been proven time and time again. And if you DON'T have that coercion, you face an uphill battle no matter how good you do on technical and marketing fronts. Also been proven time and time again.

I agree that "coercion," or more accurately the tyranny of the default, is the dominant factor in language popularity even today, but you're reaching when you apply that to web frameworks too.  As you admit, rails didn't become as big as it might have because there were quickly many other web frameworks, ie languages and frameworks on the server are very competitive and that market is very fragmented, though PHP is likely the biggest.

D's problem on the client is that the popular platforms are still very much tied to certain favored languages:

iOS - ObjC and Swift
Android non-game apps - Java
Android games - C/C++
Windows - C# or C++
Web - Javascript

Three of the four major client platforms all allow other languages (with the fourth starting to with WebAssembly), but you're often fighting the tide if you choose a non-default language so most don't bother.

We can make the dev experience more pleasant on those platforms, as I believe has happened now that we support the MS toolchain on Windows, but D is unlikely to become popular without a killer app that demonstrates its suitability.  That's not coercion, but something we can actually control.

On Thursday, 9 February 2017 at 00:30:53 UTC, Mike wrote:
> I think the D leadership are too busy addressing broader issues with the language at the moment, so this specific case is just not a high priority.  Also, if it's not a priority to the them, then anyone that does attempt to work on it will just suffer an eternity in pull request purgatory.
>
> So, I would not recommend it as a project for anyone until the D leadership decides to get involved.

I think this misunderstands how open source works: the whole point is that you don't need anybody's permission to go do this.  Walter and Andrei, or any other OSS core team, are much more likely to approve something if you have an implementation that works well.  Look at Ilya and what happened after he showed them Mir.

Now, you may not want to go do this on your own if you believe it's a lot of effort, could use a design the core team may not approve, and don't want to maintain or develop your own fork indefinitely, but that's a lot of "if"s.  I doubt it would be a lot of effort to strip D down like this, but I have not looked into it.