On Sunday, 11 October 2020 at 13:32:19 UTC, bachmeier wrote:
> On Sunday, 11 October 2020 at 11:24:42 UTC, Imperatorn wrote:
>> When looking for languages to learn, you have to start "somewhere".
>>
>> How do we make D part of this "somewhere"?
>
> Why would someone use D? If the best you can do is come up with a list of technical features of the language, you have your answer as to why it's not on those lists. Not many people go looking for a programming language. They're looking for a solution to a problem.
>

I think this answers it. Rarely am I looking at the language itself (for the job). So I think it's flawed to focus solely on the language itself. If the ecosystem (of packages and development tools) doesn't provide me with an easy way of getting things done, then what's the point?

So this is a primary reason why I'll choose one language over another. Most coders I know are not capable nor willing to build their own stuff when it's available out of the box in other languages.

On Tuesday, 13 October 2020 at 07:24:23 UTC, aberba wrote:
> On Sunday, 11 October 2020 at 13:32:19 UTC, bachmeier wrote:
>> On Sunday, 11 October 2020 at 11:24:42 UTC, Imperatorn wrote:
>>> When looking for languages to learn, you have to start "somewhere".
>>>
>>> How do we make D part of this "somewhere"?
>>
>> Why would someone use D? If the best you can do is come up with a list of technical features of the language, you have your answer as to why it's not on those lists. Not many people go looking for a programming language. They're looking for a solution to a problem.
>>
>
> I think this answers it. Rarely am I looking at the language itself (for the job). So I think it's flawed to focus solely on the language itself. If the ecosystem (of packages and development tools) doesn't provide me with an easy way of getting things done, then what's the point?
>
> So this is a primary reason why I'll choose one language over another. Most coders I know are not capable nor willing to build their own stuff when it's available out of the box in other languages.

Depends on what kind of programming it is and the kind of people you have.  If most of the code is specific to your use and wrapping another library is a small cost versus everything else involved in solving your problem then you are going to arrive at a different answer from someone who is in a different situation.

The breadth of D comes in surprisingly useful.  For example a little language for writing reports - you certainly aren't going to need low level features for that.  Well, what if you want to allow users to configure reports with a lambda but want some restrictions on remote code execution by design.  Well maybe you could just build Linux containers into the little language by dropping down to syscall level.  First draft of that took a very long evening.  Then longer for others to fix some weird GC problems.  But now we have ephemeral containers built in to the language.

Our little language written in D can call good chunks of C++ too thanks to cling.  I'm not proud of it,  but it can compile C++ at runtime and call it.  So that opens up quite a few libraries.

Then plasticity and absence of boilerplate are also quite valuable.

I think it's a mistake to focus mostly on making D more accessible; a little doesn't hurt.  D will gain adoption from people like Weka.io - absolutely nobody would advise building a new storage startup using an emerging language that nobody at your startup knows.  But almost nobody would succeed in building the world's fastest parallel storage system (and not by a little) in a few years.  So D is like a secret weapon for disruptive innovation that's only available to people who are already quite unusual sorts of people.

We are hiring at least forty people to write D, and I don't think we have been the only ones hiring in the past couple of years.

But there's also no shortage of people who could write D; C++ programmers seem to pick it up quite quickly.

On Sunday, 11 October 2020 at 11:24:42 UTC, Imperatorn wrote:
>
>
> D is not present anywhere in languages to learn... Why?
> (I get that it can be a chicken and egg problem)
>
> When looking for languages to learn, you have to start "somewhere".
>
> How do we make D part of this "somewhere"?
>
> Thanks

This answer may not be welcome, but the answer is : it's open source.  Write a tutorial yourself and persuade somehow others to join you.

If you are good at writing tutorials, maybe you will get a job from it if you want one. We are hiring people to write documentation and tutorials for internal projects.

On Sunday, 11 October 2020 at 11:24:42 UTC, Imperatorn wrote:
> First some background
> ---------------------
>
> Languages to learn 2020:
> https://www.edureka.co/blog/top-10-programming-languages/0
> https://morioh.com/p/f39596f1028e
> https://towardsdatascience.com/top-10-in-demand-programming-languages-to-learn-in-2020-4462eb7d8d3e
> https://www.guru99.com/best-programming-language.html
> https://www.simplilearn.com/best-programming-languages-start-learning-today-article
> https://scand.com/company/blog/top-programming-languages-to-use-in-2020/
> https://www.fullstackacademy.com/blog/nine-best-programming-languages-to-learn
> https://hackr.io/blog/best-programming-languages-to-learn-2020-jobs-future
> https://www.ignite.digital/10-best-programming-languages-to-learn-in-2020/
>
> General:
> http://pypl.github.io/PYPL.html
> https://www.tiobe.com/tiobe-index/
> https://redmonk.com/sogrady/2020/07/27/language-rankings-6-20/
> https://githut.info/
> https://github.com/oprogramador/github-languages
> https://www.cleveroad.com/blog/programming-languages-ranking
>
> Summary
> -------
>
> D is not present anywhere in languages to learn... Why?
> (I get that it can be a chicken and egg problem)
>
> When looking for languages to learn, you have to start "somewhere".
>
> How do we make D part of this "somewhere"?
>
> Thanks

Hi, i'm new in here,

Personally, D atrracted me because of:

- Introspection
- Native binary
- Low memory usage
- It is familiar to someone that have used C++ and Java before

I think that introspection should be the main marketing focus for D. And, of course, we need more companies adopting the language.

On Sunday, 1 November 2020 at 21:15:25 UTC, J. V. wrote:
> On Sunday, 11 October 2020 at 11:24:42 UTC, Imperatorn wrote:
>> [...]
>
> Hi, i'm new in here,
>
> Personally, D atrracted me because of:
>
> - Introspection
> - Native binary
> - Low memory usage
> - It is familiar to someone that have used C++ and Java before
>
> I think that introspection should be the main marketing focus for D. And, of course, we need more companies adopting the language.

For me the language should focus on scientific library such as do
- python with numpy, scipy, scikit-learn and so on
Indeed data to analyze becomes bigger and bigger years after years. Python can not anymore handle such big data.

Moreover, lots of numerical companies depends of such solutions, economy, marketing, science. To me the market is here

On Sunday, 11 October 2020 at 11:24:42 UTC, Imperatorn wrote:
>
> D is not present anywhere in languages to learn... Why?
> (I get that it can be a chicken and egg problem)
>
> When looking for languages to learn, you have to start "somewhere".
>
> How do we make D part of this "somewhere"?
>
> Thanks

I want to add my 2 cent as newbie:

- For plain applications, D looks quite similiar to C++, C# but is less popular. It this a benefit?

- It's likely that users need a library. This library may exists as D code but even the search for that library is not intuitive. You have to try multiple terms or browse manually for the library, this is bad. Also the library seems to be outdated while the C library developers just did a new release and you could assume the D-lib is just dead. This makes D look more like an experiment than a living standard.

- The offical library reference is visually "unfriendly". For example, devdocs.io do a better job. On the D-site, it looks not well formatted. I am loosing focus while reading on some locations. The search engine is unsatisfying. Even that I can't format code in forums bothers me, because that are standard features and they just not there. This appears as "unfinished", we are not in year 1998.

- D also needs a new modern, _just working_ IDE with syntax highlighting, formatting, autocomplete hints, quick documentation. I've tried the Dlang IDE, VisualD, WebFreak-D or other Plugins for Visual Studio and IDEA. Plugins either do not work well, get broken with never versions (eg. MonoDevelop) but also true for VS Code. You see quickly that event VisualD is just a plugin which is buggy, crashes and does not really integrate well (sepearate build options, passing arguments ignored, etc). Also realtime debugging is a pain, eg with VisualD: If you are lucky it will display the stack correctly - but it has problems with template functions and it show your structs in initial state rather actual value. I could not run the debugger in VS Code, it runs/breaks but shows nothing and it's not my job to report bugs to plugin-devs that just don't have the time to fix them. I could also only run partial debugging on IntelliJ IDEA since variables are not updated on change - there is always such an issue and the list goes on...

Of course this is offtopic by the language itself but it has a heavy influence if I would try a new language which tools are only working on the command line out of the box. You may get the point, if you want to attract new users, you need a supported, working welcome packet just as an IDE with friendly features so the users can just start making experiences.

On Monday, 26 October 2020 at 02:14:07 UTC, Laeeth Isharc wrote:
> On Tuesday, 13 October 2020 at 07:24:23 UTC, aberba wrote:
>> On Sunday, 11 October 2020 at 13:32:19 UTC, bachmeier wrote:
>>> On Sunday, 11 October 2020 at 11:24:42 UTC, Imperatorn wrote:
>>>> When looking for languages to learn, you have to start "somewhere".
>>>>
>>>> How do we make D part of this "somewhere"?
>>>
>>> Why would someone use D? If the best you can do is come up with a list of technical features of the language, you have your answer as to why it's not on those lists. Not many people go looking for a programming language. They're looking for a solution to a problem.
>>>
>>
>> I think this answers it. Rarely am I looking at the language itself (for the job). So I think it's flawed to focus solely on the language itself. If the ecosystem (of packages and development tools) doesn't provide me with an easy way of getting things done, then what's the point?
>>
>> So this is a primary reason why I'll choose one language over another. Most coders I know are not capable nor willing to build their own stuff when it's available out of the box in other languages.
>
> Depends on what kind of programming it is and the kind of people you have. ...
> I think it's a mistake to focus mostly on making D more accessible; a little doesn't hurt.  D will gain adoption from people like Weka.io - absolutely nobody would advise building a new storage startup using an emerging language that nobody at your startup knows.  But almost nobody would succeed in building the world's fastest parallel storage system (and not by a little) in a few years.  So D is like a secret weapon for disruptive innovation that's only available to people who are already quite unusual sorts of people.
>

That's assuming that the dev population is all Weka.io...which is quite the opposite. Only a few people are going to build the fastest file system, etc, ...and C++ is already matured enough for such (for those already with C++ workforce).

Cooperates might use D if they are sure to have enough devs to hire...and that comes after it's popularly used among regular devs. And regular devs start from somewhere.

Someone built vibe.d...and it's the most popular on dub
Someone built arsd and it's popular
etc. etc.

The majority of devs are consumers (and some might build something for the ecosystem)...but it starts from somewhere.

BTW...there was a lot of nitpicking of vibe.d and dub but it seems?? most of those people have gotten used to it. We need more of such stuff in the package repository.

On Tuesday, 3 November 2020 at 16:49:16 UTC, frame wrote:
> On Sunday, 11 October 2020 at 11:24:42 UTC, Imperatorn wrote:
>> [...]
>
> I want to add my 2 cent as newbie:
>
> - For plain applications, D looks quite similiar to C++, C# but is less popular. It this a benefit?
>
> [...]

+1 on IDE 🚨

On Monday, 2 November 2020 at 22:40:05 UTC, bioinfornatics wrote:
> For me the language should focus on scientific library ...

Yes. I think D has left many potential acolytes on the table by not going after this user base more vigorously, but there's still plenty of opportunity for success.

> Moreover, lots of numerical companies depends of such solutions, economy, marketing, science. To me the market is here

+1

On Tuesday, 3 November 2020 at 16:49:16 UTC, frame wrote:
>
> I want to add my 2 cent as newbie:
>
> - D also needs a new modern, _just working_ IDE with syntax highlighting, formatting, autocomplete hints, quick documentation. I've tried the Dlang IDE, VisualD, WebFreak-D or other Plugins for Visual Studio and IDEA. Plugins either do not work well, get broken with never versions (eg. MonoDevelop) but also true for VS Code.
>
+1

I wonder how many new users are turned off by the IDE issues in D. I use VS Code and only ever use it as a glorified syntax highlighter - I don't use any other features. Even I had to uninstall the D plugins and write code using C++ highlighting. I have literally just finished configuring my Kate installation for highlighting D code as a temporary solution. Just one well provisioned IDE would be significant for the community.