On Saturday, 10 March 2018 at 10:05:49 UTC, rumbu wrote:
>
> According to the State of D Survey, 71% of the respondents don't care about betterC. Why is betterC on the priority list?

who cares what 'the majority' want... I mean really.

stuff em!

(ohh... that was in jest.. don't take that seriously)

On Saturday, 10 March 2018 at 11:07:56 UTC, psychoticRabbit wrote:
> On Saturday, 10 March 2018 at 10:47:09 UTC, Dylan Graham wrote:
>>
>> Yeah. Why should D worry about tying itself into C when it can't even interface with itself through DLLs?
>
> A reasonable point.
>
> But.. in any case.. people work on what they are motivated to work on.
>
> That's really all there is to it.
>
> That's how the open source community works.
>

I'm talking about the D Foundation priority list, not about the open source community surrounding it. I have nothing against betterC, the community is free to work on it, but I don't understand why it's a *priority* for the D foundation. Is there any funding involved requesting explicitly betterC support?

On Saturday, 10 March 2018 at 11:45:25 UTC, rumbu wrote:
>
> I'm talking about the D Foundation priority list, not about the open source community surrounding it. I have nothing against betterC, the community is free to work on it, but I don't understand why it's a *priority* for the D foundation. Is there any funding involved requesting explicitly betterC support?

I think cause interoperating with C/C++, as well as encouraging migrating C/C++ code over D..has always been a key objective for Andrei and Walter (as least that's the impression I get - as a relative newcomer to D).

So I doesn't surprise me that it would be (remain) a priority for the D foundation, which they (and others) represent.

All power to em...

Although... I'm just not convinced that C programmers will give up C, and C++ programmers will give up C++ ... well... certainly I don't see any mass migration on the horizon of my crystal ball.

Everyone will end up programming in C++, Java, or .NET .. says the crystal ball.

On Saturday, 10 March 2018 at 11:45:25 UTC, rumbu wrote:
> I'm talking about the D Foundation priority list, not about the open source community surrounding it. I have nothing against betterC, the community is free to work on it, but I don't understand why it's a *priority* for the D foundation. Is there any funding involved requesting explicitly betterC support?

perhaps this question can be one of many, that the community ask the members of the D foundation, on stage, during the Q and A at the upcoming Dconf ;-)

there will be a roasting.. won't there?

On Saturday, 10 March 2018 at 10:05:49 UTC, rumbu wrote:
> On Friday, 9 March 2018 at 21:43:53 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
>> Hello, the vision document of the Founation for the first six months of 2018 is here:
>>
>> https://wiki.dlang.org/Vision/2018H1
>>
>
> According to the State of D Survey, 71% of the respondents don't care about betterC. Why is betterC on the priority list?

Just ignore it. And don't forget the primary betterC's goal.
It was never designed to please some C developers to take profit from D without dealing with D full runtime but to help migrating from historical C/C++ compiler backend to a fully D native compiler backend.

The objective is to obtain bootstraping and get rid of all other language's dependencies, which will be a huge advantage and advertising for D use and in extenso, D community and penetration-market.

Convincing C developpers to try out betterC is "just" a temporary (and positive) side-effect.

On Friday, 9 March 2018 at 21:43:53 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
> Hello, the vision document of the Founation for the first six months of 2018 is here:
>
> https://wiki.dlang.org/Vision/2018H1
>
> In addition to the expected items, we have a new top-level priority - locking down the language definition. This is in recognition of the fact that we need a precise definition of the language going forward.
>
>
> Thanks,
>
> Andrei

> Establish the DIP as a clear, solid means to get a language enhancement going

Very excited about this one. Hopefully some faith can be restored in the process.

On Saturday, 10 March 2018 at 11:07:56 UTC, psychoticRabbit wrote:
> On Saturday, 10 March 2018 at 10:47:09 UTC, Dylan Graham wrote:
>>
>> Yeah. Why should D worry about tying itself into C when it can't even interface with itself through DLLs?
>
> A reasonable point.
>
> But.. in any case.. people work on what they are motivated to work on.
>
> That's really all there is to it.
>
> That's how the open source community works.
>
> Top down, corporate direction, simply does not apply here.
>
> One day you (or some other D programmer) might need betterC - who knows - and it'll be there for you - cause someone else was motivated to do it.

Well, no. I'm more concerned with the fact that the D Language Foundation is focused on BetterC, yet does not mention DLLs at all.

For God's sake, if D is the future, why does it continue to leech off C/C++? Other languages like Rust and C# only have basic function calling C (FFI/PInvoke) yet are way more popular. I get the feeling that most of the C++ programmers who would come to D have already done so.

The most I'll ever need of interfacing with C and C++ is to be able to call their functions from D. I've no reason for BetterC.

And what's with the language design, anyway? D has been designed with features that C++ programmers don't want, then now the D Language Foundation is wasting effort to change the language to rope those programmers in? If D was meant to be C++ 2.0, shouldn't it have been designed that way from the start?

I came to D from a C# background. I was looking a language that had a GC, was awesome to program in and was very fast. Why can't D own up to these facts, rather than becoming a leech of C++?

Every day D becomes more like C++ 2.0, why can't it just be D?

On Sunday, 11 March 2018 at 00:36:19 UTC, Dylan Graham wrote:
> On Saturday, 10 March 2018 at 11:07:56 UTC, psychoticRabbit wrote:
>> On Saturday, 10 March 2018 at 10:47:09 UTC, Dylan Graham wrote:
> [Omitted]

I also would like to point out that I don't care if some open-source developers decide to create BetterC in their free time. More power to them. It doesn't concern me.

What does concern me is that BetterC is the focus of the *D Language Foundation*. Why isn't interfacing with D more important?

I'm becoming more and more skeptical of the future of D.

On Sunday, 11 March 2018 at 00:36:19 UTC, Dylan Graham wrote:
> Well, no. I'm more concerned with the fact that the D Language Foundation is focused on BetterC, yet does not mention DLLs at all.
>
> For God's sake, if D is the future, why does it continue to leech off C/C++? Other languages like Rust and C# only have basic function calling C (FFI/PInvoke) yet are way more popular. I get the feeling that most of the C++ programmers who would come to D have already done so.
>
> The most I'll ever need of interfacing with C and C++ is to be able to call their functions from D. I've no reason for BetterC.
>
> And what's with the language design, anyway? D has been designed with features that C++ programmers don't want, then now the D Language Foundation is wasting effort to change the language to rope those programmers in? If D was meant to be C++ 2.0, shouldn't it have been designed that way from the start?
>
> I came to D from a C# background. I was looking a language that had a GC, was awesome to program in and was very fast. Why can't D own up to these facts, rather than becoming a leech of C++?
>
> Every day D becomes more like C++ 2.0, why can't it just be D?

Point to the wall on the left side. That is what your talking to. D its focus on C++ as a bad plan has been made pushed by many people ( lots who left ). Its like asking Go for Generics.

And its very nice to see the "71% in the poll do not want BetterC", well, screw them comment. So what is the point again by asking people opinions? And sure, BetterC can be reused to improve the D core but that is not what people want NOW. And yet, its a priority when 71% say its not!

D simply is not equipped for dealing with people who come from languages like C#, Ruby, PHP, Python, ... because too many people here are C++ old timers ( yes, there are exceptions ) and they only think in that direction.

Kind of ironic when D keeps pushing for more features hoping that it will attract C++ developers and the young kid on the block Rust is already eating up that market. And "scripting" language like PHP, that everybody criticizes just keeps growing and gained 11% market share in the last 7 years ( at now 83% ). Where as D its gain has been minimalist thanks to people leaving almost as fast as it gain.

There is a lesson the be learned in this somewhere...

On Sunday, 11 March 2018 at 00:36:19 UTC, Dylan Graham wrote:
>
> Every day D becomes more like C++ 2.0, why can't it just be D?

Oddly enough, I think this is D's strength.

Golang tried to draw the line, and look where that got it. Now it's a limited language for a specific domain  (at least until Go 3.0).

Rust decided (and Go to some extent), to introduce foreign syntax that was vastly different to what the majority of programmers are familiar with, and, it makes it difficult to transistion to because its syntax is so unlike the syntax most people will continue to have to work with.

D's strength, is that most C/C++/Java/C# programmers can just jump right in and use it. And, they can continue to go back and forth without syntax related psychosis developing.

betterc is just another way of supporting that crowd..and it's a very big crowd.

Your problem is not betterc, but something else. So focus on that instead.

And personally, depending on the problem, C# is better to program in than D. I still don't know why C# programmers are willing to give up C# and prefer to use D.
C# is vastly surperior for what it does.

D is also particulary useful for some problems.

Better to use both, not one or the other.

Thanks to not being Go or Rust, you can do that - cause concepts, syntax  etc, are really compatible with both.