On Wednesday, 24 November 2021 at 17:27:45 UTC, Ola Fosheim Grøstad wrote:
> You are assuming too much now. The complaining do correlate to D not fulfilling their use case needs, the solutions they request may or may not be a good solution.
Optimizing the design to the regulars do not broaden the appeal of the language. In order to broaden the appeal you have to look to those that are not yet enthusiastic.
> venting, I don't see how we could do better in this regard. And the latter would definitely not be doable with our manpower.
It is quite possible that no individual person can do better. Cooperation around one vision / plan might be necessary. Like Robert pointed out.
The assumption here appears to be that since the people we're trying to attract are not already using D, people already using D can't know what would buy them in, but a word from an outside complainer is more reliable. People know their own motivations best, right?
Sounds reasonable, but Walter has shared personal experiences that warn about that attitude. For example:
> Related to me by a friend: X told me that what he really wanted in a C++ compiler was compile speed. It was the most important feature. He went on and on about it. I laughed and said that compile speed was at the bottom of his list. He looked perplexed, and asked how could I say that? I told him that he was using Cfront, a translator, with Microsoft C as the backend, a combination that compiled 4 times slower than Zortech C++, and didn't have critical (for DOS) features like near/far pointers. What he really regarded as the most important feature was being a name brand.
Given that, It does not sound a very good idea to design the language around what everyone is lobbying for on the forums. I'd much rather concentrate on specific bug reports, questions and improvement proposals. With them the designer can at least trust they show something that really matters, not just made-up excuses for some unacknowledged bias.