On Monday, 22 July 2019 at 16:29:16 UTC, Newbie2019 wrote:
>
>
> I suggestion we should focus fix bugs and improve support/platform/quality.
>
> Keep improve IDE,  dub package, language server.
>
> Finish the LDC support for IOS/Android,  (I read from forum history,  people say it take a weekend work to made IOS branch upgrade to latest version,  but last commit for IOS is 2017).


This is a variation of "build it and they will come" talk. I have thousands of software users, and they couldn't bother that I fix bugs, improve support and quality. What they care is about the perception of that software, which is a social construct.
Existing users may care, but new ones won't take a look just because bug X was fixed or "compiler has improved speed by 3%".

On Monday, 22 July 2019 at 23:16:26 UTC, Margo wrote:
> On Sunday, 21 July 2019 at 00:22:11 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:

> Any talk about code refactoring, library splitting, etc is a wast of hot air. Again, sorry to say this but its like looking at a Echo Chamber whenever i past by here.

It is exactly that... You are right in your analysis and this is why D will never get anywhere. It's past it's prime. It will continue going down the same path that hasn't worked. It is highly unlikely that real change will come because of what you have stated. You have the cult leaders and the cult followers. The followers simply parrot what the leaders say in trying to gain favorable position but ultimately reinforcing the failed mentalities of the leaders, who actually need to be challenged because they ultimately will lead the cult astray. It's how all things go with humans. One will always be successful at sometime when they only look at the pro's... Real progress is made in turning the weaknesses into strengths.

Only thing I'd disagree with you is I'd give D's library an F though. It's a terrible trash heap of organization. While it may contain a useful things, the way it is organized and the nomenclature is just moronic. It's obvious that it was cobbled together and one pays the price when they use it. It may have quite a lot of functionality but the way it is presented is a mess.

The problem with the leaders, generally, is that they are myopic. They want to focus on the successes and ignore the failures. This is what most humans do. They want to feel good about the accomplishments so they can feel good about themselves. The ones that generally are the most successful are the people who are never happy.... they keep pushing and pushing and pushing and eventually they have made so much progress that the result is a cohesive. One see's this not just in programming but in everything. Great musicians are no different. They are the ones who were never satisfied with what they were good at.  There are many musicians in the world who have amazing talent and will never get anywhere... and we always see these kids who are amazing yet never turn out to be squat because at some point they fail to work on their weaknesses(which may not even be musical).

D simply does not have the leadership to take it where everyone wants to go. What it boils down to is this: Walter is happy with where D is at. Many of the followers are happy where D is at(although you'll notice over time the ones who have invested in D tend to see the flaws and become disgruntled or leave(this is typical behavior since the veil of truth reveals the flaws with time))... and so D will stay where it is at. This is why I use D for nothing new. I'm not going to waste any time with it. It's already a very difficult ecosystem to use compared to other languages and, to be honest, it really doesn't offer anything that can't be done anywhere else. It's just nice to have as a convenience for certain problems, but when everything else is inconveniencing around it, it becomes counter productive.

With D I've become the most unproductive programmer I have ever been while thinking I've become the most productive... that is D in a nutshell for me and it's not an exaggeration. It's not the language that is the problem either.

On Tuesday, 23 July 2019 at 17:58:20 UTC, Aphex wrote:
> On Monday, 22 July 2019 at 23:16:26 UTC, Margo wrote:
>> On Sunday, 21 July 2019 at 00:22:11 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:
>
>> Any talk about code refactoring, library splitting, etc is a wast of hot air. Again, sorry to say this but its like looking at a Echo Chamber whenever i past by here.
>
> It is exactly that... You are right in your analysis and this is why D will never get anywhere. It's past it's prime. It will continue going down the same path that hasn't worked. It is highly unlikely that real change will come because of what you have stated. You have the cult leaders and the cult followers. The followers simply parrot what the leaders say in trying to gain favorable position but ultimately reinforcing the failed mentalities of the leaders, who actually need to be challenged because they ultimately will lead the cult astray. It's how all things go with humans. One will always be successful at sometime when they only look at the pro's... Real progress is made in turning the weaknesses into strengths.
>
> Only thing I'd disagree with you is I'd give D's library an F though. It's a terrible trash heap of organization. While it may contain a useful things, the way it is organized and the nomenclature is just moronic. It's obvious that it was cobbled together and one pays the price when they use it. It may have quite a lot of functionality but the way it is presented is a mess.
>
> The problem with the leaders, generally, is that they are myopic. They want to focus on the successes and ignore the failures. This is what most humans do. They want to feel good about the accomplishments so they can feel good about themselves. The ones that generally are the most successful are the people who are never happy.... they keep pushing and pushing and pushing and eventually they have made so much progress that the result is a cohesive. One see's this not just in programming but in everything. Great musicians are no different. They are the ones who were never satisfied with what they were good at.  There are many musicians in the world who have amazing talent and will never get anywhere... and we always see these kids who are amazing yet never turn out to be squat because at some point they fail to work on their weaknesses(which may not even be musical).
>
> D simply does not have the leadership to take it where everyone wants to go. What it boils down to is this: Walter is happy with where D is at. Many of the followers are happy where D is at(although you'll notice over time the ones who have invested in D tend to see the flaws and become disgruntled or leave(this is typical behavior since the veil of truth reveals the flaws with time))... and so D will stay where it is at. This is why I use D for nothing new. I'm not going to waste any time with it. It's already a very difficult ecosystem to use compared to other languages and, to be honest, it really doesn't offer anything that can't be done anywhere else. It's just nice to have as a convenience for certain problems, but when everything else is inconveniencing around it, it becomes counter productive.
>
> With D I've become the most unproductive programmer I have ever been while thinking I've become the most productive... that is D in a nutshell for me and it's not an exaggeration. It's not the language that is the problem either.

I am thinking of myself using a tool which making me counter productive but yet I am stick to it though I thought there is nothing serious about the tool and that the tool is not special, other betters tools are out there.

Why can't I move on instead of being cynical, it is because I cannot find equality to the tool out there.

D is difficult to drop because of it elegance and beauty. People just want to use in all ramifications, when they are not able they because very unhappy and critize all.  I understand that feeling. Why will a beautiful language like D not be the talk of the whole world and be adopted by many?  I am really concern too.

If D must become what it suppose to be,  our attitude toward the language must change as community members or stake holders. I believe the leadership must listen more but we must speak in a manner that they can listen to us.


For me,  if this all about D,  it is a success

On Tuesday, 23 July 2019 at 10:15:52 UTC, Russel Winder wrote:
> Phobos is driven by the "batteries included" philosophy which is a philosophy past it's time. Python and C++ are also failing to come to terms with this.

Hm, I don't see this. A scripting language like Python does need to a have an extensive standard library. C++ only recently got basic file system support... C++ is hardly "batteries included". Go actually has a lot available in it's standard library, even a web server...

On Tuesday, 23 July 2019 at 00:03:28 UTC, Laeeth Isharc wrote:
>
> It's not very nice of you to say the results so far in language outreach have not been good at all without being more specific.
>  The Foundation is just getting started and same thing with the D blog.  Seems to me the latter has had a pretty strong start.
>
> The world is long people with strong views about what to do,short on those willing to contribute something to make their vision a reality.
>
> [...]
>
> Digital transformation is about adaptiveness and speed.  Moore's Law is dead in economic terms and yet useful data sets might grow 10x in the next dozen years.  I don't think there will be a shortage of people in coming years wanting to write fast code fast and some of those will use D.  I've been saying this for a few years now and since then Mercedes, Audi and Weka are just a few of the notable adopters.  I don't think people were expecting that to happen five years ago.  These things take a long time.

I didn't mean to sound so negative. And I agree that there is some promising recent success in specific companies. My meaning is only that all avenues should be pursued, even if fixing one issue or implementing one memory management paradigm looks like the critical priority from the CS point of view. Precisely because, while improvements are on the way, D as is can be used by many more people than now.

For example there is a huge gap between the original vision for D (high and low level, GC in principle, etc) and the demands of the current community. The latter is a restriction of the former comparable to Unity Burst C# in relation to standard C#. It's good to address this demand but in addition, was the original vision so wrong; is D not a good high level language already (and more)?

Indeed the biggest success stories I know (such as Weka and other DConf talks) take advantage of D's abilities along the whole spectrum from high to very low level (dealing with whatever open issues, excess of internal dependencies, druntime etc); but why doesn't D have more adoption by purely high level users, competing with e.g. Python -- at least by those who are hitting its limitations and then need to interop with C/C++ etc?

Of course D's corporate sponsors aren't as powerful as Google, Microsoft, Oracle or Sun formerly, or even Mozilla. I used to assume that Python must have been the perfect example of a purely grassroots open-source success story; but upon closer examination Python did not have corporate sponsors -- it had two state sponsors (Dutch CWI and USA CNRI)! So indeed experience says that D is at a big disadvantage, and it is not so surprising (or discouraging) that it hasn't reached the adoption of even Rust or Go in a longer time; but this is a reason to try harder in every front. (Note: corporate sponsorship probably helps with promotion/PR/branding as much as it does with manpower and funding.)

I must admit I have a big mouth while I am not really using D for any sizable project. So as others I also see the issue from the point of view of what has stopped me from doing so (imo small ecosystem due to low adoption in a vicious circle). Still I've been following D for many years because I like it, I like and basically agree with Walter and Andrei's vision all along, and I hope it grows. I even post on LinkedIn some news e.g. the vacancies at Audi AID.

But precisely about media and promotion, I wonder if D has a strategy. There's these news groups/forums. Then there's third party media and various websites frequented by developers, which can be  separate islands (Reddit, Hacker News, LinkedIn, Twitter, Stack Overflow...) I reckon corporate directors visit some more than others or not at all. Though I do think introducing a new language will always come from senior developers below; but managers need to be (open to be) convinced.

On 7/22/2019 5:47 PM, Laeeth Isharc wrote:
> I think whether D is right for you also depends on time preference of the people involved and the culture.  I don't think it's a coincidence that D is surprisingly popular in Germany and Japan and is less appealing to Americans than one might have guessed.
Curiously, back in the Zortech C++ days, we got a lot of traction in England, Germany, and Japan. Other countries, not so much. I think we sold 2 copies in France :-)

Clearly, it's cultural, but I don't know much more than that.

England might be because Zortech was a British company. Germany and Japan, I speculate that culturally they attach less importance to social proof and more importance on specific merits. But I don't know.

On Tuesday, 23 July 2019 at 10:15:52 UTC, Russel Winder wrote:
> On Tue, 2019-07-23 at 03:01 +0000, Exil via Digitalmars-d wrote:
>> […]
>> 
>> The problem is who has control of these things. I've made pull requests to dub, they just sit around and nothing gets done. Very few people have access to actually enact change. Don't say stuff like "you have to do action yourself" cause it's not on me or anyone else. There's hundreds of pull requests for DMD and DUB combined. There's only so much people can do when pull requests sit idle for months/years, especially worse when there's no responding. When something somewhat default appears, no one on the D team is willing to do anything about it. They all look to Walter, and Walter is usually to busy doing something else so he never gets around to it. But yah, a very naive thing to say considering the current state of how things are managed with the project. God bless Seb for having enhanced permission status ^TM.
>
> Go and Rust got this right from the very outset – make the standard library as small as possible and have everything else provided through user packages/crates. Go only got this partly right in that there was no central repository, just DVCS packages. Rust got this very right in that it has a central repository and Cargo can use DVCS crates and even local file crates. This creates a vibrant community with some competition (which has bad as well as good sides to it).
>
> I am sure Dub can do for D most of the things Cargo does for Rust, but the crucial difference is Phobos in D vs std in Rust. Phobos is driven by the "batteries included" philosophy which is a philosophy past it's time. Python and C++ are also failing to come to terms with this.
>
> What D needs is to rip everything out of Phobos that is not actually needed
> for the compiler to compile code and put it into the Dub repository as
> separate packages – this is what the Rust team did, and it was the right thing
> to do.
>
> If this means creating D v3, then that seems like a really good thing to do.

Dub will probably never be as good as Cargo. I actively avoid Dub as it is. Even its documentation is atrocious, I loath having to look through it when I am forced to. There's no one on the D team with a vision for it, to make sure it gets to where it needs to go. No one actively developing it. This isn't something you can just thrust on someone else like someone in this thread was proposing to do with their "just do it yourself" mentality.

On Thursday, 18 July 2019 at 23:00:03 UTC, bauss wrote:
> Microsoft has published article about needing a safer system programming language.
>
> https://msrc-blog.microsoft.com/2019/07/18/we-need-a-safer-systems-programming-language/
>
> Could D (Most likely as betterC) have fit into that domain OR is it not yet safe?

Rust is the winner.
https://msrc-blog.microsoft.com/2019/07/22/why-rust-for-safe-systems-programming/

On Wednesday, 24 July 2019 at 01:16:23 UTC, Domain wrote:
> On Thursday, 18 July 2019 at 23:00:03 UTC, bauss wrote:
>> Microsoft has published article about needing a safer system programming language.
>>
>> https://msrc-blog.microsoft.com/2019/07/18/we-need-a-safer-systems-programming-language/
>>
>> Could D (Most likely as betterC) have fit into that domain OR is it not yet safe?
>
> Rust is the winner.
> https://msrc-blog.microsoft.com/2019/07/22/why-rust-for-safe-systems-programming/

Well they already said that in the first post.

On Wednesday, 24 July 2019 at 01:16:23 UTC, Domain wrote:
> On Thursday, 18 July 2019 at 23:00:03 UTC, bauss wrote:
>> Microsoft has published article about needing a safer system programming language.
>>
>> https://msrc-blog.microsoft.com/2019/07/18/we-need-a-safer-systems-programming-language/
>>
>> Could D (Most likely as betterC) have fit into that domain OR is it not yet safe?
>
> Rust is the winner.
> https://msrc-blog.microsoft.com/2019/07/22/why-rust-for-safe-systems-programming/

They already stated they were Rust. My question wasn't whether D would be considered by Microsoft but whether it __could__ have been been considered.

See the bottom of the article:

"In our next post, we’ll explore why we think the Rust programming language is currently the best choice for the industry to adopt whenever possible due to its ability to write systems-level programs in a memory-safe way."