Just found by chance, if someone is interested [1] [2].

/Paolo

[1] https://gitlab.com/mihails.strasuns/blog/blob/master/articles/on_leaving_d.md
[2] https://blog.mist.global/articles/My_concerns_about_D_programming_language.html

On Wednesday, 22 August 2018 at 11:59:37 UTC, Paolo Invernizzi wrote:
> Just found by chance, if someone is interested [1] [2].
>
> /Paolo
>
> [1] https://gitlab.com/mihails.strasuns/blog/blob/master/articles/on_leaving_d.md
> [2] https://blog.mist.global/articles/My_concerns_about_D_programming_language.html

Pretty positive overall, and the negatives he mentions are fairly obvious to anyone paying attention. D would really benefit from a project manager, which I think Martin Nowak has tried to do, and which the companies using D and the community should get together and fund as a paid position. Maybe it could be one of the funding targets for the Foundation.

If the job was well-defined, so I knew exactly what we're getting by hiring that person, I'd contribute to that.

On Wednesday, 22 August 2018 at 17:42:56 UTC, Joakim wrote:
> Pretty positive overall, and the negatives he mentions are fairly obvious to anyone paying attention.

Yea, I agree, the negatives are not really negative

Walter not matter how smart he is, he is one man who can work on the so many things at the same time

Its a chicken and egg situation, D needs more core contributors, and to get more contributors it needs more users, and to get more users it need more core contributors

On 22/08/18 21:34, Ali wrote:
> On Wednesday, 22 August 2018 at 17:42:56 UTC, Joakim wrote:
>> Pretty positive overall, and the negatives he mentions are fairly obvious to anyone paying attention.
> 
> Yea, I agree, the negatives are not really negative
> 
> Walter not matter how smart he is, he is one man who can work on the so many things at the same time
> 
> Its a chicken and egg situation, D needs more core contributors, and to get more contributors it needs more users, and to get more users it need more core contributors
> 

No, no and no.

I was holding out on replying to this thread to see how the community would react. The vibe I'm getting, however, is that the people who are seeing D's problems have given up on affecting change.

It is no secret that when I joined Weka, I was a sole D detractor among a company quite enamored with the language. I used to have quite heated water cooler debates about that point of view.

Every single one of the people rushing to defend D at the time has since come around. There is still some debate on whether, points vs. counter points, choosing D was a good idea, but the overwhelming consensus inside Weka today is that D has *fatal* flaws and no path to fixing them.

And by "fatal", I mean literally flaws that are likely to literally kill the language.

And the thing that brought them around is not my power of persuasion. The thing that brought them around was spending a couple of years working with the language on an every-day basis.

And you will notice this in the way Weka employees talk on this forum: except me, they all disappeared. You used to see Idan, Tomer and Eyal post here. Where are they?

This forum is hostile to criticism, and generally tries to keep everyone using D the same way. If you're cutting edge D, the forum is almost no help at all. Consensus among former posters here is that it is generally a waste of time, so almost everyone left, and those who didn't, stopped posting.

And it's not just Weka. I've had a chance to talk in private to some other developers. Quite a lot have serious, fundamental issues with the language. You will notice none of them speaks up on this thread.

They don't see the point.

No technical project is born great. If you want a technical project to be great, the people working on it have to focus on its *flaws*. The D's community just doesn't do that.

To sum it up: fatal flaws + no path to fixing + no push from the community = inevitable eventual death.

With great regrets,
Shachar

On Thursday, 23 August 2018 at 03:50:44 UTC, Shachar Shemesh wrote:
> Every single one of the people rushing to defend D at the time has since come around. There is still some debate on whether, points vs. counter points, choosing D was a good idea, but the overwhelming consensus inside Weka today is that D has *fatal* flaws and no path to fixing them.
>
> And by "fatal", I mean literally flaws that are likely to literally kill the language.

How so? If he's right with those issues, they can definitely prevent D from becoming mainstream, but how would they kill D? I mean, will not there always be some existing users who have no need or wish to move on?

On 23/08/18 07:35, Dukc wrote:
> On Thursday, 23 August 2018 at 03:50:44 UTC, Shachar Shemesh wrote:
>> Every single one of the people rushing to defend D at the time has since come around. There is still some debate on whether, points vs. counter points, choosing D was a good idea, but the overwhelming consensus inside Weka today is that D has *fatal* flaws and no path to fixing them.
>>
>> And by "fatal", I mean literally flaws that are likely to literally kill the language.
> 
> How so? If he's right with those issues, they can definitely prevent D from becoming mainstream, but how would they kill D? I mean, will not there always be some existing users who have no need or wish to move on?
> 

Maintaining a language requires a lot of work. The "payback" for that work comes from people who actually use that work.

If the D community starts to contract, it will become more and more difficult to find people willing to work on D's core features, which will lead to stagnation which is the same as death.

But, again, it is interesting to see what you took from my mail. I'd be much more worried about the fact that it is working with D that caused people to recognize the problems as fundamental than about what "death" means in this context.

Shachar

On Thursday, 23 August 2018 at 03:50:44 UTC, Shachar Shemesh wrote:
> No, no and no.
>
> I was holding out on replying to this thread to see how the community would react. The vibe I'm getting, however, is that the people who are seeing D's problems have given up on affecting change.
>
> It is no secret that when I joined Weka, I was a sole D detractor among a company quite enamored with the language. I used to have quite heated water cooler debates about that point of view.
>
> Every single one of the people rushing to defend D at the time has since come around. There is still some debate on whether, points vs. counter points, choosing D was a good idea, but the overwhelming consensus inside Weka today is that D has *fatal* flaws and no path to fixing them.
>
> And by "fatal", I mean literally flaws that are likely to literally kill the language.
>
> And the thing that brought them around is not my power of persuasion. The thing that brought them around was spending a couple of years working with the language on an every-day basis.
>
> And you will notice this in the way Weka employees talk on this forum: except me, they all disappeared. You used to see Idan, Tomer and Eyal post here. Where are they?
>
> This forum is hostile to criticism, and generally tries to keep everyone using D the same way. If you're cutting edge D, the forum is almost no help at all. Consensus among former posters here is that it is generally a waste of time, so almost everyone left, and those who didn't, stopped posting.
>
> And it's not just Weka. I've had a chance to talk in private to some other developers. Quite a lot have serious, fundamental issues with the language. You will notice none of them speaks up on this thread.
>
> They don't see the point.
>
> No technical project is born great. If you want a technical project to be great, the people working on it have to focus on its *flaws*. The D's community just doesn't do that.
>
> To sum it up: fatal flaws + no path to fixing + no push from the community = inevitable eventual death.
>
> With great regrets,
> Shachar

"anarchy driven development" is a pearl. It is also mood driven development. Yesterday was scope and -dip1000 super important, today is betterC very hot and everyone works on betterC druntime, betterC Phobos, betterC libraries. Maybe -dip1000 will be made default at some point and the language will get another one well-intentioned but only half-working feature. And I'm beginning to doubt that the real problem is that the community doesn't help.

Don't get me wrong, I do development in absolutely the same, anarchy driven :), way. Sometimes I can't work long enough at the same thing, sometimes I lose interest. It is also great for research and trying out new ideas since D tries to be innovative and offer a better developer experience. And I can also understand that the language authors want to control the evolution of the language and try make it better testing new ideas.

But this kind of development doesn't work anymore that well for commercial customers that aren't (only) interested in research. From this perspective D becomes over-complicated, half-finished language. And nobody can tell what will be "in" tomorrow.

On Thursday, 23 August 2018 at 04:44:47 UTC, Shachar Shemesh wrote:
> But, again, it is interesting to see what you took from my mail.

I think the biggest problem is lack of reviewers when making PR:s. The fact that we have D language foundation, state of D survey, extensive autotester and regular release schelude seem to imply, for me, that much more than ADD is being done.

But then again, my D projects so far are too small that I could really know where the problems are. It may be that in time, if they grow, I start to agree with you.

On Thursday, 23 August 2018 at 04:59:47 UTC, Dukc wrote:
> On Thursday, 23 August 2018 at 04:44:47 UTC, Shachar Shemesh wrote:
>> But, again, it is interesting to see what you took from my mail.
>
> I think the biggest problem is lack of reviewers when making PR:s. The fact that we have D language foundation, state of D survey, extensive autotester and regular release schelude seem to imply, for me, that much more than ADD is being done.
>
> But then again, my D projects so far are too small that I could really know where the problems are. It may be that in time, if they grow, I start to agree with you.

JinShil referenced in another thread a PR where Walter and Andrei just ignored the review and merged the pull request (I had to laugh). A valid merge-stopper (missing/wrong documentation) was called "bureaucracy".

https://github.com/dlang/dmd/pull/8346

On Thursday, 23 August 2018 at 03:50:44 UTC, Shachar Shemesh wrote:
> No, no and no.
>
> I was holding out on replying to this thread to see how the community would react. The vibe I'm getting, however, is that the people who are seeing D's problems have given up on affecting change.
>
> It is no secret that when I joined Weka, I was a sole D detractor among a company quite enamored with the language. I used to have quite heated water cooler debates about that point of view.
>
> Every single one of the people rushing to defend D at the time has since come around. There is still some debate on whether, points vs. counter points, choosing D was a good idea, but the overwhelming consensus inside Weka today is that D has *fatal* flaws and no path to fixing them.

A list, please? Now that I actually have time to fix things, I intend to do so.

> And by "fatal", I mean literally flaws that are likely to literally kill the language.
>
> And the thing that brought them around is not my power of persuasion. The thing that brought them around was spending a couple of years working with the language on an every-day basis.
>
> And you will notice this in the way Weka employees talk on this forum: except me, they all disappeared. You used to see Idan, Tomer and Eyal post here. Where are they?
>
> This forum is hostile to criticism, and generally tries to keep everyone using D the same way. If you're cutting edge D, the forum is almost no help at all. Consensus among former posters here is that it is generally a waste of time, so almost everyone left, and those who didn't, stopped posting.
>
> And it's not just Weka. I've had a chance to talk in private to some other developers. Quite a lot have serious, fundamental issues with the language. You will notice none of them speaks up on this thread.
>
> They don't see the point.

That reminds me, what happened to our conversation with Ali Çehreli about splitting general into Technical and less technical? Not to imply that the problems listed are purely technical. There is a distinct lack of well documented direction beyond incremental improvements.

> No technical project is born great. If you want a technical project to be great, the people working on it have to focus on its *flaws*. The D's community just doesn't do that.
>
> To sum it up: fatal flaws + no path to fixing + no push from the community = inevitable eventual death.
>
> With great regrets,
> Shachar

Indeed. It is time to push, then.

Nic