On Friday, 29 June 2018 at 07:03:52 UTC, Dmitry Olshansky wrote:

> P.S. I mean what you think the future of native code is??? Rust? Crystal?? Nim???

The future of native code will be replacing scripting languages. D is really good at that task.

The future of native code will not be one language. I don't know why the discussion always turns to that, because it goes against the steady increase in the number of good languages that are available. Different folks have different preferences, many of us use multiple languages, and our preferences change over our lifetimes. These days language interoperability is getting so good that "choosing a language" is becoming obsolete. If we keep reducing the obstacles to using D, the number of users will continue to grow.

WRT donating money, isn't it natural to explain what will be done with the money? There's been some movement in the direction of transparency. I'll only say there's more to be done in that area and leave it at that.

On Friday, 29 June 2018 at 20:13:07 UTC, Ecstatic Coder wrote:

> Have a look at Crystal's Github project, you will see that Crystal, still in development and quite far from its 1.0 mile version (= despite no parallism and windows support, etc) ALREADY has 11206 stars, 881 forks and 292 contributors :
>
> https://github.com/crystal-lang/crystal
>
> Not bad for a language in its 0.25 version and first released in June 2014 (4 years), especially compared to D in its 2.0 version and first released in December 2001 (16 years), whose official compiler has 1806 stars, 452 forks and 168 contributors :
>
> https://github.com/dlang/dmd
>
> If those numbers means anything, I think its that Crystal is probably getting popularity much quicker than D, and honestly, after having tried it, I think it's really deserved, even if I agree that there are still many things that remain to be implemented before it's really ready for an official "production-ready" 1.0 release.

Do you by chance work as a manager? Managers like comparisons that involve one number, with a higher number being better. I don't know what can be learned about D from that comparison and I don't think anyone else does either.

On Friday, 29 June 2018 at 22:54:34 UTC, bachmeier wrote:
> On Friday, 29 June 2018 at 07:03:52 UTC, Dmitry Olshansky wrote:
>
>> P.S. I mean what you think the future of native code is??? Rust? Crystal?? Nim???
>
> The future of native code will be replacing scripting languages. D is really good at that task.

This will never happen, doesn't matter how good D is at it, they will always be better because they sacrifice performance for ease of use.

> The future of native code will not be one language. I don't know why the discussion always turns to that, because it goes against the steady increase in the number of good languages that are available. Different folks have different preferences, many of us use multiple languages, and our preferences change over our lifetimes. These days language interoperability is getting so good that "choosing a language" is becoming obsolete. If we keep reducing the obstacles to using D, the number of users will continue to grow.

Yep, agreed.

> WRT donating money, isn't it natural to explain what will be done with the money? There's been some movement in the direction of transparency. I'll only say there's more to be done in that area and leave it at that.

Let me echo this: transparency has historically been a big problem for D.  AFAIK, nobody in the broader community was ever told that the D foundation money would be used to fund a bunch of Romanian interns, it just happened. In the end, it appears to have worked out great, but why would anybody donate without being given transparency on where the money was going in the first place, when it could have ended badly?

I understand Andrei had connections with that Romanian university, but some donor might have had connections with a Brazilian or Chinese university that might have worked out even better. We'll never explore such connections and alternatives without transparency.

The current move to fund some IDE work with Opencollective is better in that regard, but with no concrete details on what it entails, not significantly better:

https://forum.dlang.org/post/pxwxhhbuburvddnhacgh@forum.dlang.org

Anyway, I don't use such IDEs, so not a reason for me to donate anyway.

Honestly, Dmitry's posts starting this thread are incoherent, I'm not sure what he was trying to say. If he feels D users should be donating much more, he and others need to make clear how that money will be spent.

On Saturday, 30 June 2018 at 03:02:15 UTC, Joakim wrote:
> Honestly, Dmitry's posts

The writing style doesn't match the name.

On Friday, 29 June 2018 at 22:59:25 UTC, bachmeier wrote:
> On Friday, 29 June 2018 at 20:13:07 UTC, Ecstatic Coder wrote:
>
>> Have a look at Crystal's Github project, you will see that Crystal, still in development and quite far from its 1.0 mile version (= despite no parallism and windows support, etc) ALREADY has 11206 stars, 881 forks and 292 contributors :
>>
>> https://github.com/crystal-lang/crystal
>>
>> Not bad for a language in its 0.25 version and first released in June 2014 (4 years), especially compared to D in its 2.0 version and first released in December 2001 (16 years), whose official compiler has 1806 stars, 452 forks and 168 contributors :
>>
>> https://github.com/dlang/dmd
>>
>> If those numbers means anything, I think its that Crystal is probably getting popularity much quicker than D, and honestly, after having tried it, I think it's really deserved, even if I agree that there are still many things that remain to be implemented before it's really ready for an official "production-ready" 1.0 release.
>
> Do you by chance work as a manager? Managers like comparisons that involve one number, with a higher number being better. I don't know what can be learned about D from that comparison and I don't think anyone else does either.

That's your opinion.

First, most managers don't become manager by chance, but because of their skills.

Like being able to take the right decisions, based on facts, not on personal preferences.

For instance, if a good manager sees that the github project of a 4 years old compiler has been liked by 11206 persons, and the github project of a 16 years old compiler has been liked by 1806 persons, I think he could probably think that MUCH more people are interested in the development of the first github project than in the second.

But if you want to think the opposite, it's perfectly your right, I've got not problem with that.

On Saturday, 30 June 2018 at 06:52:01 UTC, Ecstatic Coder wrote:
> On Friday, 29 June 2018 at 22:59:25 UTC, bachmeier wrote:
>> On Friday, 29 June 2018 at 20:13:07 UTC, Ecstatic Coder wrote:
>>
>>> Have a look at Crystal's Github project, you will see that Crystal, still in development and quite far from its 1.0 mile version (= despite no parallism and windows support, etc) ALREADY has 11206 stars, 881 forks and 292 contributors :
>>>
>>> https://github.com/crystal-lang/crystal
>>>
>>> Not bad for a language in its 0.25 version and first released in June 2014 (4 years), especially compared to D in its 2.0 version and first released in December 2001 (16 years), whose official compiler has 1806 stars, 452 forks and 168 contributors :
>>>
>>> https://github.com/dlang/dmd
>>>
>>> If those numbers means anything, I think its that Crystal is probably getting popularity much quicker than D, and honestly, after having tried it, I think it's really deserved, even if I agree that there are still many things that remain to be implemented before it's really ready for an official "production-ready" 1.0 release.
>>
>> Do you by chance work as a manager? Managers like comparisons that involve one number, with a higher number being better. I don't know what can be learned about D from that comparison and I don't think anyone else does either.
>
> That's your opinion.
>
> First, most managers don't become manager by chance, but because of their skills.
>
> Like being able to take the right decisions, based on facts, not on personal preferences.
>
> For instance, if a good manager sees that the github project of a 4 years old compiler has been liked by 11206 persons, and the github project of a 16 years old compiler has been liked by 1806 persons, I think he could probably think that MUCH more people are interested in the development of the first github project than in the second.

I'd hope a manager would look at actually meaningful stats like downloads, rather than just fluffy stats such as "likes":

http://www.somsubhra.com/github-release-stats/?username=crystal-lang&repository=crystal
http://www.somsubhra.com/github-release-stats/?username=ldc-developers&repository=ldc

I see around 9k total downloads of the various Crystal 0.24 and 0.25 versions over the last 8 months, compared to 14k downloads of the ldc 1.9 compiler alone from two months ago. Of course, all these stats can be gamed, but I think it'd be hard to argue Crystal is more popular.

> DasBetterC resolves that, though the library issue remains.

Indeed.

Unfortunately, it's often the standard library which makes the difference between a nice language, and a nice useful language.

D is a great language not only because of the many great decisions you made when designing the language (UFCS, slice-based strings and arrays, etc), but also because of its great standard library, which is well designed and very complete.

To be really useful as a C++ alternative, D still needs another standard library based on reference counting, instead of garbage collection, even if this implies that some class interfaces will have to diverge from their GC-based counterpart.

Without that, D will be a bit like a gun without ammunitions for many developers.

>> And Rust, despite it has perfect C/C++-like performance
>
> D has perfect C/C++ like performance, if you code it the same way.

+1 :)

On Saturday, 30 June 2018 at 07:11:18 UTC, Joakim wrote:
> On Saturday, 30 June 2018 at 06:52:01 UTC, Ecstatic Coder wrote:
>> On Friday, 29 June 2018 at 22:59:25 UTC, bachmeier wrote:
>>> On Friday, 29 June 2018 at 20:13:07 UTC, Ecstatic Coder wrote:
>>>
>>>> Have a look at Crystal's Github project, you will see that Crystal, still in development and quite far from its 1.0 mile version (= despite no parallism and windows support, etc) ALREADY has 11206 stars, 881 forks and 292 contributors :
>>>>
>>>> https://github.com/crystal-lang/crystal
>>>>
>>>> Not bad for a language in its 0.25 version and first released in June 2014 (4 years), especially compared to D in its 2.0 version and first released in December 2001 (16 years), whose official compiler has 1806 stars, 452 forks and 168 contributors :
>>>>
>>>> https://github.com/dlang/dmd
>>>>
>>>> If those numbers means anything, I think its that Crystal is probably getting popularity much quicker than D, and honestly, after having tried it, I think it's really deserved, even if I agree that there are still many things that remain to be implemented before it's really ready for an official "production-ready" 1.0 release.
>>>
>>> Do you by chance work as a manager? Managers like comparisons that involve one number, with a higher number being better. I don't know what can be learned about D from that comparison and I don't think anyone else does either.
>>
>> That's your opinion.
>>
>> First, most managers don't become manager by chance, but because of their skills.
>>
>> Like being able to take the right decisions, based on facts, not on personal preferences.
>>
>> For instance, if a good manager sees that the github project of a 4 years old compiler has been liked by 11206 persons, and the github project of a 16 years old compiler has been liked by 1806 persons, I think he could probably think that MUCH more people are interested in the development of the first github project than in the second.
>
> I'd hope a manager would look at actually meaningful stats like downloads, rather than just fluffy stats such as "likes":
>
> http://www.somsubhra.com/github-release-stats/?username=crystal-lang&repository=crystal
> http://www.somsubhra.com/github-release-stats/?username=ldc-developers&repository=ldc
>
> I see around 9k total downloads of the various Crystal 0.24 and 0.25 versions over the last 8 months, compared to 14k downloads of the ldc 1.9 compiler alone from two months ago. Of course, all these stats can be gamed, but I think it'd be hard to argue Crystal is more popular.

Obviously you haven't read my post.

No problem, I'll repeat it.

I said that Crystal is probably gaining popularity FASTER than D.

I've never said that Crystal is more used than D.

FYI, D is in the top 50 at the TIOBE index, while Crystal is only in the top 100.

Of course, you will tell me that these rankings are numbers, and that a higher number means nothing. Right ?

On Saturday, 30 June 2018 at 07:28:24 UTC, Ecstatic Coder wrote:
> On Saturday, 30 June 2018 at 07:11:18 UTC, Joakim wrote:
>> On Saturday, 30 June 2018 at 06:52:01 UTC, Ecstatic Coder wrote:
>>> [...]
>>
>> I'd hope a manager would look at actually meaningful stats like downloads, rather than just fluffy stats such as "likes":
>>
>> http://www.somsubhra.com/github-release-stats/?username=crystal-lang&repository=crystal
>> http://www.somsubhra.com/github-release-stats/?username=ldc-developers&repository=ldc
>>
>> I see around 9k total downloads of the various Crystal 0.24 and 0.25 versions over the last 8 months, compared to 14k downloads of the ldc 1.9 compiler alone from two months ago. Of course, all these stats can be gamed, but I think it'd be hard to argue Crystal is more popular.
>
> Obviously you haven't read my post.
>
> No problem, I'll repeat it.
>
> I said that Crystal is probably gaining popularity FASTER than D.
>
> I've never said that Crystal is more used than D.
>
> FYI, D is in the top 50 at the TIOBE index, while Crystal is only in the top 100.
>
> Of course, you will tell me that these rankings are numbers, and that a higher number means nothing. Right ?

I'll tell you that all data should be carefully vetted before using it to draw conclusions. For example, I just checked and the ldc data includes a download for every CI run, which skews it upwards, but I doubt enough to change my conclusion above:

https://github.com/ldc-developers/ldc/blob/master/.circleci/config.yml#L62

On Saturday, 30 June 2018 at 07:11:18 UTC, Joakim wrote:
> On Saturday, 30 June 2018 at 06:52:01 UTC, Ecstatic Coder wrote:
>> On Friday, 29 June 2018 at 22:59:25 UTC, bachmeier wrote:
>>> On Friday, 29 June 2018 at 20:13:07 UTC, Ecstatic Coder wrote:
>>>
>>>> Have a look at Crystal's Github project, you will see that Crystal, still in development and quite far from its 1.0 mile version (= despite no parallism and windows support, etc) ALREADY has 11206 stars, 881 forks and 292 contributors :
>>>>
>>>> https://github.com/crystal-lang/crystal
>>>>
>>>> Not bad for a language in its 0.25 version and first released in June 2014 (4 years), especially compared to D in its 2.0 version and first released in December 2001 (16 years), whose official compiler has 1806 stars, 452 forks and 168 contributors :
>>>>
>>>> https://github.com/dlang/dmd
>>>>
>>>> If those numbers means anything, I think its that Crystal is probably getting popularity much quicker than D, and honestly, after having tried it, I think it's really deserved, even if I agree that there are still many things that remain to be implemented before it's really ready for an official "production-ready" 1.0 release.
>>>
>>> Do you by chance work as a manager? Managers like comparisons that involve one number, with a higher number being better. I don't know what can be learned about D from that comparison and I don't think anyone else does either.
>>
>> That's your opinion.
>>
>> First, most managers don't become manager by chance, but because of their skills.
>>
>> Like being able to take the right decisions, based on facts, not on personal preferences.
>>
>> For instance, if a good manager sees that the github project of a 4 years old compiler has been liked by 11206 persons, and the github project of a 16 years old compiler has been liked by 1806 persons, I think he could probably think that MUCH more people are interested in the development of the first github project than in the second.
>
> I'd hope a manager would look at actually meaningful stats like downloads, rather than just fluffy stats such as "likes":
>
> http://www.somsubhra.com/github-release-stats/?username=crystal-lang&repository=crystal
> http://www.somsubhra.com/github-release-stats/?username=ldc-developers&repository=ldc
>
> I see around 9k total downloads of the various Crystal 0.24 and 0.25 versions over the last 8 months, compared to 14k downloads of the ldc 1.9 compiler alone from two months ago. Of course, all these stats can be gamed, but I think it'd be hard to argue Crystal is more popular.

Anyway, I you think that Crystal is not worth our attention, it's your right.

But my PERSONAL opinion is that Crystal will soon become a great alternative to D, Go and Rust for web server development, while I still think that D is BY FAR a much better language than Go or Rust.

So now we can try to analyze what make Crystal a useful and popular language in this domain and learn lessons from it, or simply ignore it.

Very honestly I don't care, because I exclusively use D as a file processing scripting language, and I'm very happy with D in its current state.

And to be perfectly clear on that point, its current syntax is perfect, very simple and concise, and if DON'T want any change made to its current syntax which would make it less simple and concise when using it in GC mode.