Hi guys,

Just wanted to remind you that, D maybe isn't that bad.

We're very good at bashing our own language, but we should also remember sometimes what it has given us.

I have spent the last months going through other languages, and I can say, the grass is always not so much greener on the other side.

Yes, there are more mature languages.
Yes, there are languages with better ecosystems.

But, just as an example - Zig - which is getting attention, is according to the community itself (including its creator) not in 1.0 until about 2025.

And still people use it, and might even think it's better than D.

Some information from their community (not my words)
It does not have a standardized package manager and build system.
It does not have an official registry of packages.
It is unstable.
It should not be used in production (actively advised against).
It changes so often that you can not rely on code to work even in 1 month from now.
etc

And still, people still think Zig is better for some reason.

Yes, D has it's flaws, true. But it's far from unfixable? Or is that what people believe?

Forget about Jai, Odin, Beef and all those languages.

Go - Welcome rheumatism 👴
Rust - Welcome brain tumor from not even being able to prototype something in less than 2 years 😩
C++ - Welcome to hell 🔥
...

The only real language out there that is close to what D is/could be is Nim and I respect it.
But, its syntax is not that kind to those who loved the curly braces.

All I'm saying is - maybe it's best if we just fix D?

There is some valid criticism, like the risk for attribute soup etc. But maybe it's fixable?

Remember what D gives you in terms of UFCS, CTFE, metaprogramming, performance, package manager, prototyping, inline assembly, 3 compilers for different use cases etc.

Is D really that bad?

On Friday, 28 October 2022 at 09:51:04 UTC, Imperatorn wrote:

D is a good language but it has some obvious flaws that are easily recognizable and these can be fixed. The problem is the management and the total tone deafness/insight who refuse to recognize these often because of self manufactured dogmas. This is really frustrating as if the odds and ends could be fixed in the language it could bring it to a very competitive state. It's like falling over right before the finishing line. The only way out of this is if D is forked.

On Friday, 28 October 2022 at 09:51:04 UTC, Imperatorn wrote:

D isn't bad. D is good. it's just needs many bugfixing and more stability (without which it's complicated to even advertise it to use it for prod) and also it needs more stable and maintained tools (frameworks) for many things, like bindings for wayland and better wasm/wasi support. and more interesting things, like docker/kubernetes does for Go.

Also, I'm trying here to figure out how to write wasm runtime support (yes, I know about adr's one), and I think there should be better documentation/api generator/browser, like golang's/python's godoc/pydoc servers.

On Friday, 28 October 2022 at 10:20:38 UTC, IGotD- wrote:

I hope we can find a solution without forking ❤️

On Friday, 28 October 2022 at 10:23:16 UTC, AnimusPEXUS wrote:

I agree, but I think this could be fixed. We must have hope! 😎

On Friday, 28 October 2022 at 09:51:04 UTC, Imperatorn wrote:

It's not that bad, but there are too few people. D needs fresh blood, new ideas, organization, orientation, position, and reconstruction.
Need a priority todo list.

On Friday, 28 October 2022 at 09:51:04 UTC, Imperatorn wrote:

I don't think it makes much sense to talk about better or worse without a use case. Zig seems to aim for embedded like settings, but I don't like the language design regardless, as of today. But that could change.

You cannot predict the future, but if you go 10 years back and identify things that ought to be fixed (in the sense that it would make the language more broadly appealing) and find that those issues are still there, then there must be something making it difficult to address. Could be the current compiler code base, could be other things.

Keeping the same process makes it improbable that there will be a significant change, for good or bad.

Why forget about Jai? If it gains traction in a specific domain like games, why not use it?

(There are also plenty of others in the works: Carbon, Circle, C++2.0, V etc)

On Friday, 28 October 2022 at 11:25:32 UTC, zjh wrote:

I often meet the ceiling on C++, so I have to rely on macro to help me.
D, It is clear that the community is small.and if bifurcated, it will go die.
It is impossible to develop a language that only 10 people use.

What D needs most is rational positioning, attracting target talents to join D and develop D.

On Friday, 28 October 2022 at 09:51:04 UTC, Imperatorn wrote:

Do not take the forums sentiment as ground truth.

If you release a software, whatever its quality, the online forums are always way more critical and acerb that the general population of users. This has become more obvious in the last decade. Auburn Sounds recently released one the best compressor in the world (https://www.auburnsounds.com/products/Lens.html, sorry for SEO), and you can get it for free, so I was expecting less criticism. Exactly the reverse happened, the better it is, the more any perceived flaw is painted as huge and "show-stopper". It attracts more criticism, like Bjarne said, in a way being good force users to use it and learn it.

On Friday, 28 October 2022 at 11:39:12 UTC, Guillaume Piolat wrote:

Sounds pretty good from the samples! Any reviews yet, or is it too new and we'll have to wait a bit? I'd love to read about it.