On 19/03/2018 2:38 PM, Manu wrote:
> On 18 March 2018 at 18:29, rikki cattermole via Digitalmars-d
> <digitalmars-d@puremagic.com> wrote:
>> On 19/03/2018 2:21 PM, Manu wrote:
>>>
>>> On 18 March 2018 at 18:11, rikki cattermole via Digitalmars-d
>>> <digitalmars-d@puremagic.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> For those not in the know, Manu is special.
>>>>
>>>> He is in essence a use case for D himself.
>>>>
>>>> We really should be trying to make him happy in terms of blockers.
>>>> It's just good business sense.
>>>>
>>>> Shame we can't throw money at him, he would have great ROI value.
>>>
>>>
>>> Haha!
>>> I tried to mitigate coming across that way, and express myself in
>>> terms of patience and frustration, which I think is probably something
>>> a lot of people here can relate to.
>>>
>>> Sure, there's no reason for anyone to care about my opinion, but I
>>> have truly spent years investing in D, and strategies and attempts to
>>> integrate it into my work *professionally*. Doing company
>>> demonstrations, training colleagues, attempting small projects as
>>> proof of concept, etc.
>>> That's all I care about. I have hobby projects like everyone, but what
>>> I *really* care about, is getting to the point where I can write D
>>> code professionally in my field of work.
>>> I also think I work in one of the prime fields where D has so much to
>>> offer... but we also have an unusually high bar-to-entry.
>>
>>
>> Your entire reply is reason to care about your opinion :)
>>
>> I'm not alone in thinking that you're a very valuable community member.
> 
> I'm not though... I'm a noisy whingey one that never actually gives
> anything back!
> I'm just a stubborn mule that's constantly trying to fight my way
> through my next hurdle.
> 
> I think maybe my lessons are of some value, and I've been a forcing
> function for a few important developments.
> If I were to start over again today, I might have different
> experience, thanks to a relative increase in ecosystem maturity
> compared to when I started.
> 
>> Perhaps you can have a chat with a member of DLF about getting a list of
>> issues for you figured out?
> 
> I've influenced more than I feel is reasonable with respect to my
> results. I've mostly failed, and not through lack of trying. There are
> lots of people here now who are having way more success than I have.
> I might do that if I could maneuver my workplace into a position where
> they were to consider a serious investigation again.

Your result, is a better D experience for everyone involved.
There has been no failure that I can see on the communities end.

You failed to create a successful commercial products using D, wait hang on Quantum Break!

Just because 99 times out of 100 you've failed doesn't mean 1 won't be successful given more hard work.

On 18 March 2018 at 18:50, rikki cattermole via Digitalmars-d <digitalmars-d@puremagic.com> wrote:
> On 19/03/2018 2:38 PM, Manu wrote:
>>
>> On 18 March 2018 at 18:29, rikki cattermole via Digitalmars-d
>>
>> <digitalmars-d@puremagic.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> On 19/03/2018 2:21 PM, Manu wrote:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On 18 March 2018 at 18:11, rikki cattermole via Digitalmars-d <digitalmars-d@puremagic.com> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> For those not in the know, Manu is special.
>>>>>
>>>>> He is in essence a use case for D himself.
>>>>>
>>>>> We really should be trying to make him happy in terms of blockers. It's just good business sense.
>>>>>
>>>>> Shame we can't throw money at him, he would have great ROI value.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Haha!
>>>> I tried to mitigate coming across that way, and express myself in
>>>> terms of patience and frustration, which I think is probably something
>>>> a lot of people here can relate to.
>>>>
>>>> Sure, there's no reason for anyone to care about my opinion, but I
>>>> have truly spent years investing in D, and strategies and attempts to
>>>> integrate it into my work *professionally*. Doing company
>>>> demonstrations, training colleagues, attempting small projects as
>>>> proof of concept, etc.
>>>> That's all I care about. I have hobby projects like everyone, but what
>>>> I *really* care about, is getting to the point where I can write D
>>>> code professionally in my field of work.
>>>> I also think I work in one of the prime fields where D has so much to
>>>> offer... but we also have an unusually high bar-to-entry.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Your entire reply is reason to care about your opinion :)
>>>
>>> I'm not alone in thinking that you're a very valuable community member.
>>
>>
>> I'm not though... I'm a noisy whingey one that never actually gives
>> anything back!
>> I'm just a stubborn mule that's constantly trying to fight my way
>> through my next hurdle.
>>
>> I think maybe my lessons are of some value, and I've been a forcing
>> function for a few important developments.
>> If I were to start over again today, I might have different
>> experience, thanks to a relative increase in ecosystem maturity
>> compared to when I started.
>>
>>> Perhaps you can have a chat with a member of DLF about getting a list of issues for you figured out?
>>
>>
>> I've influenced more than I feel is reasonable with respect to my results. I've mostly failed, and not through lack of trying. There are lots of people here now who are having way more success than I have. I might do that if I could maneuver my workplace into a position where they were to consider a serious investigation again.
>
>
> Your result, is a better D experience for everyone involved. There has been no failure that I can see on the communities end.
>
> You failed to create a successful commercial products using D, wait hang on Quantum Break!
>
> Just because 99 times out of 100 you've failed doesn't mean 1 won't be successful given more hard work.

I'm much more comfortable with confrontational emails :P

I'm not doing much work anymore though...
I'm drifting for entirely preventable reasons. I guess I just wanted
to share that here somehow. In altogether too many words! ;)

On Sunday, March 18, 2018 18:15:28 Manu via Digitalmars-d wrote:
> On 18 March 2018 at 17:55, Jonathan M Davis via Digitalmars-d
> > I definitely agree with this. If the folks fixing stuff don't have the same priorities as you, then there's a high risk that what you want to be fixed won't get fixed, and that's often how things go with open source projects.
> And here it comes again!
> I understand the reality, and echo-ing statement sounds so good to the
> community... but it's a terrible opinion to propagate if the goal is
> for D to be successful.
> You're effectively saying "D is a hobby/toy, therefore you can't bank
> on it with confidence". If I weren't a deluded zealot, there's NO WAY
> I'd let my business invest in this technology when the crowd endlessly
> repeats this sentiment.
>
> So, while it IS a practical reality, there needs to be very strong
> motivation from the community (and organisation) to combat that
> practical reality.
> I would strongly suggest; never say a sentence like this again. It's
> the wrong attitude, and it gives an undesirable impression to users.
> (assuming the goal is for D to be successful, and not a fun hobby for
> the devs)

Well, it's the reality of things are. And D can be used just fine in a production environment. It's just that you have to be willing to deal with the warts that come with the wonderful stuff. Anyone who isn't isn't going to be very happy. The number of warts have definitely gone down over time, but that doesn't mean that they're all gone, and depending on your priorities, it may be that they're far too often not going away in the places that you care about most. Either way, I'm not about to lie about the state of things. The fact that we're dealing almost exclusively with volunteers has a definite impact on what gets done and how it gets done. We're not the first language to start out that way, and others ended up being _very_ successful in the long run (e.g. it's my understanding, that python started entirely as open source with no company backing and took quite a few years to grow to the point that it had a significant user base). We've made a lot of progress, but we also have quite a lot of work to do.

> > But at the same time, if you come to D, see all kinds of great things about it, and think that it's going to be fantastic but keep running into things that cause you problems when you try to use D, and then those pain points don't get fixed even after years of dealing with the language, that's going to be very frustrating - even more so if you've invested a lot of time and energy into it.
> >
> > On some level, the only solution is to buckle down and fix your pain points yourself, but that can also be quite frustrating.
>
> Or hire staff who are paid to work on 'boring' issues. I would make regular donations if I could be satisfied that my decade old issues would be addressed. I wonder how many others would too?

With how things seem to be going with the D Foundation, it seems increasingly likely that something like this will happen. It wasn't all that long ago that there was trouble having enough money to pay for the travel expenses of folks going to dconf, let alone hire staff to work on stuff. As I understand it, some money has already been paid for specific projects (e.g. the new CTFE engine), but AFAIK, there isn't currently anyone being paid just to fix bugs. That may come though, especially if folks are willing to donate money specifically towards that end.

- Jonathan M Davis

On Monday, 19 March 2018 at 00:59:45 UTC, Manu wrote:
> On 18 March 2018 at 17:28, Joakim via Digitalmars-d <digitalmars-d@puremagic.com> wrote:
>>
>> Perhaps the community simply has different priorities than you? For example, my Android port has never gotten much use either, which is fine as I primarily did that work for myself.
>>
>> Nevertheless, you have to think of D as like working in a startup: if you see something that you think needs doing, you have to drive it yourself or it will never get done. Pretty much the same for most any OSS project too.
>
> This is such an easy and readily-deploy-able response here.
> What you say is true, and I totally understand this... but at the same
> time, that's not actually the relationship I want to have with my
> tool. A startup probably shouldn't still be a startup 10 years later.
>
> In your case, doing the android work was obviously an interest you had
> on the side, and you gain something from the work itself.
> I have a small amount of that, but that's not where I'm at, and it
> never has been. I want to use D to do my job, because I'm fed up with
> C++. I want to engage in D the way I think D should **EXPECT** it's
> users to engage in D; as an end-user, who uses the tool to get their
> jobs done.
> If D is a large-ish scale hobby project among a bunch of people with
> mutual interests, then that should be more clearly communicated, but I
> don't think that's the intent, and I feel perfectly fine interacting
> with D in the way D is intended to be interacted with.
>
> Incidentally, this particular work I'm doing is on a multimedia library intended for the community... so I really am truly trying to contribute something of value!! But like most of my projects, I tend to get blocked at some point, and then it goes on hold indefinitely.

+1024 bytes

I think D is a terrific language worthy of all the praise it gets and it is way way more stable than it was 3yrs ago. But the attitude of submit a PR if you want it fixed works very much against D. Like it or not these forums are a front page on the D marketing campaign.

My workplace has stopped using D after a 6 month trial, which finished in Jan 2018. Several developers did post here during that period when blocked by a bug or incomplete feature, only to be told if they want it fixed they can always submit a PR.

Inevitably when told this they simply dropped D and went back to C++ and Python. And they made a point to bring this experience up at the final go/no-go meeting.

The majority of developers, including those voting for D, had these common opinions (much to my disappointment)

a) We're not in the business of developing and maintaining D, but it seems that is what we would need to do as a company. We are better off with C++ and Python.

b) D feels like C++ did back in the mid 90's. A time when we avoided templates and often the STL because compiler implementations were too buggy. We are better off with C++ and Python.


I keep pushing D here but now it is a bit of a joke when I bring it up. I've become "the D guy" and it isn't discussed seriously any more by other developers, except a select few.

Cheers,
Norm

On 19/03/2018 3:56 PM, Norm wrote:
> On Monday, 19 March 2018 at 00:59:45 UTC, Manu wrote:
>> On 18 March 2018 at 17:28, Joakim via Digitalmars-d <digitalmars-d@puremagic.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> Perhaps the community simply has different priorities than you? For example, my Android port has never gotten much use either, which is fine as I primarily did that work for myself.
>>>
>>> Nevertheless, you have to think of D as like working in a startup: if you see something that you think needs doing, you have to drive it yourself or it will never get done. Pretty much the same for most any OSS project too.
>>
>> This is such an easy and readily-deploy-able response here.
>> What you say is true, and I totally understand this... but at the same
>> time, that's not actually the relationship I want to have with my
>> tool. A startup probably shouldn't still be a startup 10 years later.
>>
>> In your case, doing the android work was obviously an interest you had
>> on the side, and you gain something from the work itself.
>> I have a small amount of that, but that's not where I'm at, and it
>> never has been. I want to use D to do my job, because I'm fed up with
>> C++. I want to engage in D the way I think D should **EXPECT** it's
>> users to engage in D; as an end-user, who uses the tool to get their
>> jobs done.
>> If D is a large-ish scale hobby project among a bunch of people with
>> mutual interests, then that should be more clearly communicated, but I
>> don't think that's the intent, and I feel perfectly fine interacting
>> with D in the way D is intended to be interacted with.
>>
>> Incidentally, this particular work I'm doing is on a multimedia library intended for the community... so I really am truly trying to contribute something of value!! But like most of my projects, I tend to get blocked at some point, and then it goes on hold indefinitely.
> 
> +1024 bytes
> 
> I think D is a terrific language worthy of all the praise it gets and it is way way more stable than it was 3yrs ago. But the attitude of submit a PR if you want it fixed works very much against D. Like it or not these forums are a front page on the D marketing campaign.
> 
> My workplace has stopped using D after a 6 month trial, which finished in Jan 2018. Several developers did post here during that period when blocked by a bug or incomplete feature, only to be told if they want it fixed they can always submit a PR.

Did they at any point tell us that it was a blocker for your company who was trialing D?

Because I do not remember once in that time period of any one saying this.

Walter has gone out of his way in the past to help companies, even flying to them on his own dime.

If you want to be treated special, we need to have a reason for you to be treated special, otherwise you're just like everybody else complaining without giving back.

On 18 March 2018 at 19:56, Norm via Digitalmars-d <digitalmars-d@puremagic.com> wrote:
> On Monday, 19 March 2018 at 00:59:45 UTC, Manu wrote:
>>
>> On 18 March 2018 at 17:28, Joakim via Digitalmars-d <digitalmars-d@puremagic.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>> Perhaps the community simply has different priorities than you? For example, my Android port has never gotten much use either, which is fine as I primarily did that work for myself.
>>>
>>> Nevertheless, you have to think of D as like working in a startup: if you see something that you think needs doing, you have to drive it yourself or it will never get done. Pretty much the same for most any OSS project too.
>>
>>
>> This is such an easy and readily-deploy-able response here.
>> What you say is true, and I totally understand this... but at the same
>> time, that's not actually the relationship I want to have with my
>> tool. A startup probably shouldn't still be a startup 10 years later.
>>
>> In your case, doing the android work was obviously an interest you had
>> on the side, and you gain something from the work itself.
>> I have a small amount of that, but that's not where I'm at, and it
>> never has been. I want to use D to do my job, because I'm fed up with
>> C++. I want to engage in D the way I think D should **EXPECT** it's
>> users to engage in D; as an end-user, who uses the tool to get their
>> jobs done.
>> If D is a large-ish scale hobby project among a bunch of people with
>> mutual interests, then that should be more clearly communicated, but I
>> don't think that's the intent, and I feel perfectly fine interacting
>> with D in the way D is intended to be interacted with.
>>
>> Incidentally, this particular work I'm doing is on a multimedia library intended for the community... so I really am truly trying to contribute something of value!! But like most of my projects, I tend to get blocked at some point, and then it goes on hold indefinitely.
>
>
> +1024 bytes
>
> I think D is a terrific language worthy of all the praise it gets and it is way way more stable than it was 3yrs ago. But the attitude of submit a PR if you want it fixed works very much against D. Like it or not these forums are a front page on the D marketing campaign.
>
> My workplace has stopped using D after a 6 month trial, which finished in Jan 2018. Several developers did post here during that period when blocked by a bug or incomplete feature, only to be told if they want it fixed they can always submit a PR.
>
> Inevitably when told this they simply dropped D and went back to C++ and Python. And they made a point to bring this experience up at the final go/no-go meeting.
>
> The majority of developers, including those voting for D, had these common opinions (much to my disappointment)
>
> a) We're not in the business of developing and maintaining D, but it seems that is what we would need to do as a company. We are better off with C++ and Python.
>
> b) D feels like C++ did back in the mid 90's. A time when we avoided templates and often the STL because compiler implementations were too buggy. We are better off with C++ and Python.
>
>
> I keep pushing D here but now it is a bit of a joke when I bring it up. I've become "the D guy" and it isn't discussed seriously any more by other developers, except a select few.

I know these feels so well.
People take their one experience, and that's the truth on the matter.
The sad part is, it's actually a massive missed opportunity! If these
colleagues posted here, and instead were greeted by recognition of
their issue, and provided a satisfactory work-around, or even a prompt
fix, they would have taken a COMPLETELY different message away from
their interaction; it would be "this D comunity is so awesome, I can
have confidence that our issues will be handled in a personalised
way!", and there's very strong value in that for a business...

On Monday, 19 March 2018 at 03:14:51 UTC, rikki cattermole wrote:
>
> Did they at any point tell us that it was a blocker for your company who was trialing D?
>
> Because I do not remember once in that time period of any one saying this.
>
> Walter has gone out of his way in the past to help companies, even flying to them on his own dime.
>
> If you want to be treated special, we need to have a reason for you to be treated special, otherwise you're just like everybody else complaining without giving back.

We don't want to be treated special. We don't want to give back. This is the *entire* point.

D claims to be "Industry Proven and Ready" but we have to submit PRs or get special treatment from Walter to use it effectively? Sorry, but this is why many feel that D is still just a hobby project.

We are an organisation trying to get work done. D was a potential replacement of our existing C++/Python tool chain. Unfortunately it *requires* us to give back, which as I stated is not our business. Our business is the development of medical devices and supporting application software, not compiler or language development.

IMO most of D is close enough, but I am a convert and geek. Most of my fellow developers are not.

Cheers,
Norm

On 19/03/2018 4:43 PM, Norm wrote:
> On Monday, 19 March 2018 at 03:14:51 UTC, rikki cattermole wrote:
>>
>> Did they at any point tell us that it was a blocker for your company who was trialing D?
>>
>> Because I do not remember once in that time period of any one saying this.
>>
>> Walter has gone out of his way in the past to help companies, even flying to them on his own dime.
>>
>> If you want to be treated special, we need to have a reason for you to be treated special, otherwise you're just like everybody else complaining without giving back.
> 
> We don't want to be treated special. We don't want to give back. This is the *entire* point.
> 
> D claims to be "Industry Proven and Ready" but we have to submit PRs or get special treatment from Walter to use it effectively? Sorry, but this is why many feel that D is still just a hobby project.
> 
> We are an organisation trying to get work done. D was a potential replacement of our existing C++/Python tool chain. Unfortunately it *requires* us to give back, which as I stated is not our business. Our business is the development of medical devices and supporting application software, not compiler or language development.

You just said the magic word, medical.

D was never an appropriate fit here.

dmd's backend has been for thirty years (or so) been up to recently licensed so that you may not use it for this purpose. Nothing has changed here.

On Monday, 19 March 2018 at 03:53:07 UTC, rikki cattermole wrote:
> On 19/03/2018 4:43 PM, Norm wrote:
>> On Monday, 19 March 2018 at 03:14:51 UTC, rikki cattermole wrote:
>>>
>>> Did they at any point tell us that it was a blocker for your company who was trialing D?
>>>
>>> Because I do not remember once in that time period of any one saying this.
>>>
>>> Walter has gone out of his way in the past to help companies, even flying to them on his own dime.
>>>
>>> If you want to be treated special, we need to have a reason for you to be treated special, otherwise you're just like everybody else complaining without giving back.
>> 
>> We don't want to be treated special. We don't want to give back. This is the *entire* point.
>> 
>> D claims to be "Industry Proven and Ready" but we have to submit PRs or get special treatment from Walter to use it effectively? Sorry, but this is why many feel that D is still just a hobby project.
>> 
>> We are an organisation trying to get work done. D was a potential replacement of our existing C++/Python tool chain. Unfortunately it *requires* us to give back, which as I stated is not our business. Our business is the development of medical devices and supporting application software, not compiler or language development.
>
> You just said the magic word, medical.
>
> D was never an appropriate fit here.
>
> dmd's backend has been for thirty years (or so) been up to recently licensed so that you may not use it for this purpose. Nothing has changed here.

I have no idea what you're talking about now.

What has the backend license got to do with medical?

D would be a great fit for medical with its @safe, pure and GC.

Supporting application software is standard desktop development. Some of these applications are for production and testing and the rest are normal end-user Windows desktop?

We also develop mobile applications but we didn't consider D for that role.

Cheers,
Norm

The volunteer line is fine for big picture stuff that is going to require a lot of work and planing to get right. Using that for smaller feature requests is going to give the impression that D is lacking in the technical expertise to get anything done, It's often a sign that an open source project is dying. I don't think anybody wants that.

On the other hand take a little time to try and get your point accross without being unnecessarily confrontational. Not because you aren't right but because it takes less time than rehashing these conversations and I know for a fact that some of you have way more productive things to do with your time than this ;)