How to answer "why will yours succeed, when X, Y, and Z have failed?"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wIHfaH9Kffs

Very insightful talk.

On Saturday, 27 June 2020 at 15:48:33 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
> How to answer "why will yours succeed, when X, Y, and Z have failed?"
>
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wIHfaH9Kffs
>
> Very insightful talk.

He touches on, why we should have @safe by default and the importance of the C++ call support.

The challenges in this community is that everyone has their own market they would like to see D displace. C, C++, web, .Net, gnome gui...

On Saturday, 27 June 2020 at 15:48:33 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
> How to answer "why will yours succeed, when X, Y, and Z have failed?"
>
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wIHfaH9Kffs
>
> Very insightful talk.

To be honest the analysis doesn't quite stack up. Because compatibility is not the reason for the success of Go, or Rust.

I would say the success of a language depends on many factors:

* Luck
* Timing - and a need to be filled
* Sufficient commercial usage
* Big name factor - Go authors tried a few times creating languages that did not succeed until they had Google backing.
* Language offers something sufficiently different solution than existing solutions
* Tooling
* Quality of implementation

On Sunday, 28 June 2020 at 21:00:09 UTC, Dibyendu Majumdar wrote:
> On Saturday, 27 June 2020 at 15:48:33 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
>> How to answer "why will yours succeed, when X, Y, and Z have failed?"
>>
>> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wIHfaH9Kffs
>>
>> Very insightful talk.
>
> To be honest the analysis doesn't quite stack up. Because compatibility is not the reason for the success of Go, or Rust.
>
> I would say the success of a language depends on many factors:
>
> * Luck
> * Timing - and a need to be filled
> * Sufficient commercial usage
> * Big name factor - Go authors tried a few times creating languages that did not succeed until they had Google backing.
> * Language offers something sufficiently different solution than existing solutions
> * Tooling
> * Quality of implementation

* Community
* Strong die hard advocate
* Tutorials, learning resources


Those are the stuff I personally think I can't contribute more.

On Monday, 29 June 2020 at 00:24:22 UTC, aberba wrote:
> On Sunday, 28 June 2020 at 21:00:09 UTC, Dibyendu Majumdar wrote:
>> [...]
>
> * Community
> * Strong die hard advocate
> * Tutorials, learning resources
>
>
> Those are the stuff I personally think I can't contribute more.

I meant opposite, jeez 🙉

Those are the stuff I'm personally trying to push and contribute to for D primarily.

On Saturday, 27 June 2020 at 15:48:33 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
> How to answer "why will yours succeed, when X, Y, and Z have failed?"
>
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wIHfaH9Kffs
>
> Very insightful talk.

Back to C++20 and beyond which Herb Sutter refers to a lot. Is C++20 a success, or even C++17? Does anyone know this? Modern C++ isn't a programming standard so what I've seen is just a mix of everything.

I have lost track of all new C++ features and now he even refers it as "NewLang" what that is. Is that Bjarnes famous quote "Within C++, there is a much smaller and clearer language struggling to get out."? I believe it when I see it.

One thing that isn't mention that is very important for a language to succeed is libraries. C++ has a lack of standard libraries which forces the programmer to look for third party alternatives, which are of varying standard. This leads to that the there is no particular programming API standard it must gravitate to the lowest common denominator. This in contrast to Phobos which is more complete.

Does C++ need more language features or does C++ need better standard libraries? I would say the latter. If it weren't for Qt, C++ would just be a skeleton language. Qt is a great library and was that even before C++11 which proves that the new language features weren't that important.

What do you think, did "modern C++" really succeed?

On Sunday, 28 June 2020 at 21:00:09 UTC, Dibyendu Majumdar wrote:

> To be honest the analysis doesn't quite stack up. Because compatibility is not the reason for the success of Go, or Rust.
>
> I would say the success of a language depends on many factors:

Think of a reasons of why people are popular. Make a mental list of that. Now try to explain why Kardashians are still popular.

Not everything in this life happens because of some good properties. At this moment Kardashians are popular because they are popular.

On Mon, 2020-06-29 at 10:31 +0000, IGotD- via Digitalmars-d-announce wrote:
> 
[…]
> Back to C++20 and beyond which Herb Sutter refers to a lot. Is C++20 a success, or even C++17? Does anyone know this? Modern C++ isn't a programming standard so what I've seen is just a mix of everything.

I guess the question is whether concepts, coroutines, and modules finally make it in. The really interesting question is whether metaclasses make C++23.

Of course C++ is now really a niche language used by those who still use it and do not move on to more modern languages!

> I have lost track of all new C++ features and now he even refers it as "NewLang" what that is. Is that Bjarnes famous quote "Within C++, there is a much smaller and clearer language struggling to get out."? I believe it when I see it.

The problem is backward compatibility. Every new feature in C++ requires backward compatibility with all previous C++, leading to a more and more complex language. Fortran has the same problem but easier to cope with as it is a simpler language. Languages without standards do not have this problem. Except when language developers introduce breaking changes and a section of the user population screams "we must have backward compatibility". What they mean really is that they do not want to maintain their code. The Java folk showed how this pans out: eventually companies that will not deal with breaking changes go bust and are no longer a problem.

I am sure this will be seen as a rant and a troll, but that doesn't stop it also being true.

> One thing that isn't mention that is very important for a language to succeed is libraries. C++ has a lack of standard libraries which forces the programmer to look for third party alternatives, which are of varying standard. This leads to that the there is no particular programming API standard it must gravitate to the lowest common denominator. This in contrast to Phobos which is more complete.

Another rant…

…batteries included standard libraries are a thing of the 1990s and earlier. They are a reflection of pre-Internet thinking. You got a language distribution, and everything else was home grown.

Now we have the Internet you can get libraries via download. Languages come with the minimal library needed to function and all else is gettable. Go, Rust, Python, and other languages have this (even though Python still has a batteries included standard library). C++ has moved on to this idea; Conan (or other system) hasn't really caught on in C++ circles. Ditto Fortran, still using pre-2000 thinking.

D is in a similar position to Python, a huge batteries included standard library much of which should be culled, or at lease marked as deprecated, and has an central package repository for people to use. Rust, Go, and Python, show the way here. Libraries can spring up, evolve, die off, all controlled by usefulness to the user population. C++ people's focus on "the standard" seems to be stopping them doing good things.

> Does C++ need more language features or does C++ need better standard libraries? I would say the latter. If it weren't for Qt, C++ would just be a skeleton language. Qt is a great library and was that even before C++11 which proves that the new language features weren't that important.
> 
> What do you think, did "modern C++" really succeed?

Clearly Modern C++, aka C++11, was a great innovation and step forward. C++14, C++17, and I guess C++20 move the language forward.

On the other hand people are stopping using C++ in favour of Go, Rust, Python, but it seems not D.

-- 
Russel.
===========================================
Dr Russel Winder      t: +44 20 7585 2200
41 Buckmaster Road    m: +44 7770 465 077
London SW11 1EN, UK   w: www.russel.org.uk

On Monday, 29 June 2020 at 10:31:43 UTC, IGotD- wrote:
> On Saturday, 27 June 2020 at 15:48:33 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
>> How to answer "why will yours succeed, when X, Y, and Z have failed?"
>>
>> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wIHfaH9Kffs
>>
>> Very insightful talk.
>
> Back to C++20 and beyond which Herb Sutter refers to a lot. Is C++20 a success, or even C++17? Does anyone know this? Modern C++ isn't a programming standard so what I've seen is just a mix of everything.
>
> I have lost track of all new C++ features and now he even refers it as "NewLang" what that is. Is that Bjarnes famous quote "Within C++, there is a much smaller and clearer language struggling to get out."? I believe it when I see it.
>
> One thing that isn't mention that is very important for a language to succeed is libraries. C++ has a lack of standard libraries which forces the programmer to look for third party alternatives, which are of varying standard. This leads to that the there is no particular programming API standard it must gravitate to the lowest common denominator. This in contrast to Phobos which is more complete.
>
> Does C++ need more language features or does C++ need better standard libraries? I would say the latter. If it weren't for Qt, C++ would just be a skeleton language. Qt is a great library and was that even before C++11 which proves that the new language features weren't that important.
>
> What do you think, did "modern C++" really succeed?

Yes it did, thanks to its rejuvenation and CUDA, C++ has become the main language in HPC and ML, NVidia now designs their GPUs having C++ semantics in mind, although CUDA is designed as language agnostic GPGPU environment.

Metal Shaders and HLSL are largely based on C++14, and due to the game developers pressure, Google and Samsung have taken the effort to make HLSL available on Vulkan as well, porting Microsoft's open sourced HLSL compiler to SPIR-V..

On Windows, the Windows team is quite keen pushing C++/WinRT (based on C++17) to eventually provide a .NET like experience while using C++/WinUI, although the Visual Studio tooling is still lacking.

Unreal is already supporting C++17 and GCC is discussing moving to C++17 as default dialect.

Apple, Google, Microsoft, Nintendo, Sony, NVidia, AMD, ARM, still have lots of plans for it, even if they also own other language stacks on their SDKs.

So, even those of us that rather spend our productive time in other stacks, occasionally dealing with C++ is unavoidable, and it continue being so for the decades to come.

Which is why good C++ compatibility is a very valuable sales pitch of any language.

For D, on Windows that would mean to improve COM support to deal with UWP as well, as it is COM vNext. Project Reunion plans support for C++, C#, Python and JavaScript.

On Monday, 29 June 2020 at 12:17:57 UTC, Russel Winder wrote:
> On Mon, 2020-06-29 at 10:31 +0000, IGotD- via Digitalmars-d-announce wrote:
>> 
> […]
>> Back to C++20 and beyond which Herb Sutter refers to a lot. Is C++20 a success, or even C++17? Does anyone know this? Modern C++ isn't a programming standard so what I've seen is just a mix of everything.
>
> I guess the question is whether concepts, coroutines, and modules finally make it in. The really interesting question is whether metaclasses make C++23.

Concepts, coroutines, and modules are already in ISO C++20.

And co-routines are in a much better story than the incompatible runtimes currently existing for Rust async/await story.

> [...]
>
> On the other hand people are stopping using C++ in favour of Go, Rust, Python, but it seems not D.

Rust still needs to improve a lot on its tooling and ecosystem to cover many of the scenarios we use C++ for, even if is safer.

Already the fact that it lacks an ISO standard is a no go in many domains.

I guess you mean using Python as glue for GPGU libraries written in C++.