Before all,

I'm really enjoying with last weekend presentations:  thanks for the great work despite the difficulties.

Well, today I was writting an answere on Quora (spanish) about web development and I decided to enumerate some "strong typed" programming languajes with it's main webslite link (I allways include dlang as an alternative)...

I noticed that kotlin, scala, typescript, rust, ... all of them take care about the "first impression" offering a modern web interface in the main site.  DLang website first impresion is "old", mainly because de size/location/color of the 3 download buttons, the height of the top navbar, and the difficult to see the missing title "The D programming language" or "D happy developers language" ( :-p ).  Type script website is "similar" to the dlang one and first impression is better.

It's only an opinion... I'm developer, not web designer, but first impression counts!!!

On Monday, 23 November 2020 at 09:53:29 UTC, ddcovery wrote:
> Before all,
>
> I'm really enjoying with last weekend presentations:  thanks for the great work despite the difficulties.
>
> Well, today I was writting an answere on Quora (spanish) about web development and I decided to enumerate some "strong typed" programming languajes with it's main webslite link (I allways include dlang as an alternative)...
>
> I noticed that kotlin, scala, typescript, rust, ... all of them take care about the "first impression" offering a modern web interface in the main site.  DLang website first impresion is "old", mainly because de size/location/color of the 3 download buttons, the height of the top navbar, and the difficult to see the missing title "The D programming language" or "D happy developers language" ( :-p ).  Type script website is "similar" to the dlang one and first impression is better.
>
> It's only an opinion... I'm developer, not web designer, but first impression counts!!!

Well I dont know. It's not good either to have a facade that looks like if it's made by a company who apply the same template to each client, with a few aestetical changes.

On Monday, 23 November 2020 at 09:53:29 UTC, ddcovery wrote:
> Before all,
>
> I'm really enjoying with last weekend presentations:  thanks for the great work despite the difficulties.
>
> Well, today I was writting an answere on Quora (spanish) about web development and I decided to enumerate some "strong typed" programming languajes with it's main webslite link (I allways include dlang as an alternative)...
>
> I noticed that kotlin, scala, typescript, rust, ... all of them take care about the "first impression" offering a modern web interface in the main site.  DLang website first impresion is "old", mainly because de size/location/color of the 3 download buttons, the height of the top navbar, and the difficult to see the missing title "The D programming language" or "D happy developers language" ( :-p ).  Type script website is "similar" to the dlang one and first impression is better.
>
> It's only an opinion... I'm developer, not web designer, but first impression counts!!!

I did a video on the D website looking outdated. I guess a designer is needed to clean things up.

That's if the foundation is willing to make the change... decluttering the website too.

On Monday, 23 November 2020 at 11:30:31 UTC, aberba wrote:
> I did a video on the D website looking outdated. I guess a designer is needed to clean things up.
>
> That's if the foundation is willing to make the change... decluttering the website too.

I think it is fine. Better than most languages. It also works on outdated browsers, which is a plus.

Visual fashion on the web changes every 2 years, so even if you hire a graphics designer today, it will still look outdated in another 2 years.

On Monday, 23 November 2020 at 12:23:06 UTC, Ola Fosheim Grøstad wrote:
> On Monday, 23 November 2020 at 11:30:31 UTC, aberba wrote:
>> I did a video on the D website looking outdated. I guess a designer is needed to clean things up.
>>
>> That's if the foundation is willing to make the change... decluttering the website too.
>
> I think it is fine. Better than most languages. It also works on outdated browsers, which is a plus.

Is most languages your benchmark?
>
> Visual fashion on the web changes every 2 years, so even if you hire a graphics designer today, it will still look outdated in another 2 years.

I'm sure you don't work (or practice) as a web designer.

On Monday, 23 November 2020 at 12:27:42 UTC, aberba wrote:
>> Visual fashion on the web changes every 2 years, so even if you hire a graphics designer today, it will still look outdated in another 2 years.
>
> I'm sure you don't work (or practice) as a web designer.

I've been involved in this field since 2000: teaching msc-level course, designing, programming front end, back end, cloud.

On Monday, 23 November 2020 at 12:27:42 UTC, aberba wrote:
> On Monday, 23 November 2020 at 12:23:06 UTC, Ola Fosheim Grøstad wrote:
>> On Monday, 23 November 2020 at 11:30:31 UTC, aberba wrote:
>>> I did a video on the D website looking outdated. I guess a designer is needed to clean things up.
>>>
>>> That's if the foundation is willing to make the change... decluttering the website too.
>>
>> I think it is fine. Better than most languages. It also works on outdated browsers, which is a plus.
>
> Is most languages your benchmark?

Btw, this is my benchmark:

https://en.cppreference.com/

Flat architecture, for quick reference. Could it be better, sure. But far more functional than other languages atm. Fashionable visuals would make it worse, not better.

It might be the most popular website for systems programming. I use it frequently.

I also use MDN frequently, but only access it through google search.

It is important that D sells itself as a community project and not as a slick corporate entity. The current website and DConf sends that message quite effectively. "Improving" the visuals would be a waste of effort. Improving the usability and content would worthwhile though.

On 11/23/20 1:53 AM, ddcovery wrote:

> I noticed that kotlin, scala, typescript, rust, ... all of them take
> care about the "first impression"

Fully agreed.

A colleague of mine showed me how impressive Rust was just yesterday. We talked about some technical points:

* Error management
* 'match' keywoard
* And a few other technical stuff

But most of his excitement was on the user experience. He was showing me how amazing the following was:

* Rust coding inside Visual Studio (Code?)
* How the IDE writes parts of the program
* How type annotations are displayed next to variables
* Usefulness of compilation error messages
* Other Rust tools

The problem is, personally, I care only a tiny bit about these points; not much. And that is what I sensed from Atila during a couple of #BeerConf conversations. For example, both of us use Emacs as IDEs and we talked about how sub-optimal certain parts of our development experience were but neither of us were motivated enough to do anything about it because "it just worked" for us. Heck, I don't even know how D feels like inside Visual Studio.

I doubt Walter personally cares about shiny IDEs either. (He uses an Emacs-like editor, which he wrote.)

Which means, such look-and-feel topics must be championed by other people.

Having said that, part of me is screaming "people who are interested in shiny stuff need not apply" but I am explaining to myself that it's the wrong attitude. :/

Ali

On Monday, 23 November 2020 at 16:41:52 UTC, Ali Çehreli wrote:
> Having said that, part of me is screaming "people who are interested in shiny stuff need not apply" but I am explaining to myself that it's the wrong attitude. :/

Actually it isn't. The strategy ought be centered on demographics that are most likely to modify the compiler or build solid libraries.

The strongest selling point for D right now is that it has moved from a 1-person project to a 2-person+community project to (hopefully) a fully community driven project. So where D seems to be moving you can write a DIP, modify the compiler and have an impact, with C++, Rust and Go that is highly unlikely. If the D community can deliver on that, then that would be a real selling point for many system level programmers who have "pet peeves" in their daily workday.

One million programmers that expect C# fluidity + one million javascript programmers will create a lot of noise, but not move the needle. A dozen C++ programmers could.

Of course, a quality IDE experience is important, but right now, not the most critical aspect.

On Monday, 23 November 2020 at 16:41:52 UTC, Ali Çehreli wrote:

> Having said that, part of me is screaming "people who are interested in shiny stuff need not apply" but I am explaining to myself that it's the wrong attitude. :/

I don't really agree with that sentiment, somewhat along the lines of Ola's argument. Kotlin's site has a very Atlassian feel to it. That's good for Kotlin, since they're aiming for and delivering an enterprise experience. D can't deliver that experience right now. The website's Hacker News-esque design fits perfectly with what the language can deliver.

That said, there are two things I hate about the landing page. The download buttons really are ugly. The three text boxes at the bottom ("Write Fast", "Read Fast", and "Run Fast") need to use three different background colors. I know nothing about web design but not using colors to distinguish big blocks of text has to violate something.