• Kramer (11/11) Feb 09 2006 http://www.jelovic.com/articles/why_people_arent_using_haskell.htm
• Yves Jacoby (21/37) Feb 09 2006 Isn't it a little early for that for the moment ? I've discovered D some
• Kramer (12/49) Feb 09 2006 Agreed that it's too early. That's why I said I was just day-dreaming. ...
• Yves Jacoby (11/77) Feb 10 2006 I wasn't saying complaining answering to your post in particular, there
• jcc7 (7/13) Feb 10 2006 I don't know if this addresses what you're asking for at all, but someon...
• nick (14/28) Feb 09 2006 Yes and Yes.
• Yves Jacoby (14/48) Feb 10 2006 I don't know how the D community is organized internally for the moment,
• jcc7 (14/23) Feb 10 2006 We have a pretty simple organization. Walter is in charge of the D progr...
• jcc7 (18/22) Feb 10 2006 Since some of the GUI libraries don't seem to have anyone working on the...
• Chris Miller (5/14) Feb 10 2006 I don't like the Status column; difference between Early and Alpha /
• Dave (7/8) Feb 10 2006 Some specifics?
• Niko Korhonen (15/18) Feb 10 2006 Yep, Haskell and functional programming in general is definitely very
• Stewart Gordon (19/24) Feb 13 2006
• Kramer (6/30) Feb 13 2006 Whole-heartedly agreed.

Kramer <Kramer_member pathlink.com> writes:

http://www.jelovic.com/articles/why_people_arent_using_haskell.htm

I came across the link above and I thought of D while reading it.  Basically,
the author just ruminates over why Haskell hasn't taken off more and how it
seems (he feels) the community has a lot to do with that reason.

I'm not drawing any one to one links here or anything like that... just food for
thought.  The D community is just incredible IMO in their dedication to the D
language.  Quite frankly, it's part of what kept and increased my interest in D.


-Kramer

P.S. Haskell is a pretty cool language.  I'm not proposing this, but if it were
possible to have a partial functional language in D, wow!  That's just
day-dreaming though.  D's sweet as it is. :)

Yves Jacoby <kloune gmail.com> writes:

On Thu, 09 Feb 2006 21:08:32 +0000, Kramer wrote:

 http://www.jelovic.com/articles/why_people_arent_using_haskell.htm
 
 I came across the link above and I thought of D while reading it.  Basically,
 the author just ruminates over why Haskell hasn't taken off more and how it
 seems (he feels) the community has a lot to do with that reason.
 
 I'm not drawing any one to one links here or anything like that... just food
for
 thought.  The D community is just incredible IMO in their dedication to the D
 language.  Quite frankly, it's part of what kept and increased my interest in
D.
 
 
 -Kramer
 
 P.S. Haskell is a pretty cool language.  I'm not proposing this, but if it were
 possible to have a partial functional language in D, wow!  That's just
 day-dreaming though.  D's sweet as it is. :)

Isn't it a little early for that for the moment ? I've discovered D some
weeks ago, and I found it pretty interesting at first, before I ran into
the first problems: 

- Compiler output is terrible.
- There are still many bugs as one can read in the different news groups.
- There is not really a good library one can use with it.
- An advantage of D when looking at the languages which places it
could take is probably pre-, postconditions and assert. The problem is
that these are not really verbose enough (as many people tend to find -
see D.gnu) 

Somehow, it would probably bring D forward a lot if one could trust that
the problem is the code one wrote and not the compiler. I don't say other
compilers are perfect, but ... it seems there are still a lot of problems
here.

So before complaining about not as many people using D as one would like,
it would maybe be good to fix these problems and when it's done, I think
that many people will, after being introduced to it, surely use it more. 

I tried to tell some of my colleagues to try it out, but after a while, I
stopped, because I saw that D isn't ready for real use.

I hope I haven't offended anybody and if I did, sorry.

Kramer <Kramer_member pathlink.com> writes:

Comments inline...

In article <pan.2006.02.09.21.49.38.264161 gmail.com>, Yves Jacoby says...
On Thu, 09 Feb 2006 21:08:32 +0000, Kramer wrote:

 http://www.jelovic.com/articles/why_people_arent_using_haskell.htm
 
 I came across the link above and I thought of D while reading it.  Basically,
 the author just ruminates over why Haskell hasn't taken off more and how it
 seems (he feels) the community has a lot to do with that reason.
 
 I'm not drawing any one to one links here or anything like that... just food
for
 thought.  The D community is just incredible IMO in their dedication to the D
 language.  Quite frankly, it's part of what kept and increased my interest in
D.
 
 
 -Kramer
 
 P.S. Haskell is a pretty cool language.  I'm not proposing this, but if it were
 possible to have a partial functional language in D, wow!  That's just
 day-dreaming though.  D's sweet as it is. :)

Isn't it a little early for that for the moment ? I've discovered D some
weeks ago, and I found it pretty interesting at first, before I ran into
the first problems: 

Agreed that it's too early.  That's why I said I was just day-dreaming. <g>

- Compiler output is terrible.

Anything specific here?

- There are still many bugs as one can read in the different news groups.
- There is not really a good library one can use with it.
- An advantage of D when looking at the languages which places it
could take is probably pre-, postconditions and assert. The problem is
that these are not really verbose enough (as many people tend to find -
see D.gnu) 

Somehow, it would probably bring D forward a lot if one could trust that
the problem is the code one wrote and not the compiler. I don't say other
compilers are perfect, but ... it seems there are still a lot of problems
here.

So before complaining about not as many people using D as one would like,
it would maybe be good to fix these problems and when it's done, I think
that many people will, after being introduced to it, surely use it more. 

I don't think what I said should be taken as complaining; just helpful nudges.
Also, the point of the link and what I tried to impart in my message was related
to the community (which is an incredible online community dedicated to seeing D
flourish).  Walter works on what he can affect and the community does the same.
At some point there's a critical mass where the community starts to make things
better in tandem with Walter.

I tried to tell some of my colleagues to try it out, but after a while, I
stopped, because I saw that D isn't ready for real use.

I hope I haven't offended anybody and if I did, sorry.

No offense. :)  Thanks for the thoughts.

-Kramer

Yves Jacoby <kloune gmail.com> writes:

On Thu, 09 Feb 2006 22:11:55 +0000, Kramer wrote:

 Comments inline...
 
 In article <pan.2006.02.09.21.49.38.264161 gmail.com>, Yves Jacoby says...
On Thu, 09 Feb 2006 21:08:32 +0000, Kramer wrote:

 http://www.jelovic.com/articles/why_people_arent_using_haskell.htm
 
 I came across the link above and I thought of D while reading it.  Basically,
 the author just ruminates over why Haskell hasn't taken off more and how it
 seems (he feels) the community has a lot to do with that reason.
 
 I'm not drawing any one to one links here or anything like that... just food
for
 thought.  The D community is just incredible IMO in their dedication to the D
 language.  Quite frankly, it's part of what kept and increased my interest in
D.
 
 
 -Kramer
 
 P.S. Haskell is a pretty cool language.  I'm not proposing this, but if it were
 possible to have a partial functional language in D, wow!  That's just
 day-dreaming though.  D's sweet as it is. :)

Isn't it a little early for that for the moment ? I've discovered D some
weeks ago, and I found it pretty interesting at first, before I ran into
the first problems: 

 
 Agreed that it's too early.  That's why I said I was just day-dreaming. <g>
 
- Compiler output is terrible.

 
 Anything specific here?
 
- There are still many bugs as one can read in the different news groups.
- There is not really a good library one can use with it.
- An advantage of D when looking at the languages which places it
could take is probably pre-, postconditions and assert. The problem is
that these are not really verbose enough (as many people tend to find -
see D.gnu) 

Somehow, it would probably bring D forward a lot if one could trust that
the problem is the code one wrote and not the compiler. I don't say other
compilers are perfect, but ... it seems there are still a lot of problems
here.

So before complaining about not as many people using D as one would like,
it would maybe be good to fix these problems and when it's done, I think
that many people will, after being introduced to it, surely use it more. 

 
 I don't think what I said should be taken as complaining; just helpful nudges.
 Also, the point of the link and what I tried to impart in my message was
related
 to the community (which is an incredible online community dedicated to seeing D
 flourish).  Walter works on what he can affect and the community does the same.
 At some point there's a critical mass where the community starts to make things
 better in tandem with Walter.
 

I wasn't saying complaining answering to your post in particular, there
are some other posts I read, where people seem to say that there are not
enough supporters for D. 

I tried to tell some of my colleagues to try it out, but after a while, I
stopped, because I saw that D isn't ready for real use.

I hope I haven't offended anybody and if I did, sorry.

 
 No offense. :)  Thanks for the thoughts.
 
 -Kramer

Another thing I would really find helpful for this community would be a
how-to, telling people how to start if they want to patch the compiler and
especially how-to submit the patches in an ordered manner. I think this
would surely save some time to developers, if they get the patches
delivered. Choosing to include it or not is then left over to the
developer, who could than judge of the quality of the patch. 

Yves

jcc7 <jcc7_member pathlink.com> writes:

In article <pan.2006.02.10.12.00.17.997533 gmail.com>, Yves Jacoby says...
Another thing I would really find helpful for this community would be a
how-to, telling people how to start if they want to patch the compiler and
especially how-to submit the patches in an ordered manner. I think this
would surely save some time to developers, if they get the patches
delivered. Choosing to include it or not is then left over to the
developer, who could than judge of the quality of the patch. 

I don't know if this addresses what you're asking for at all, but someone has
written "The GDC Hackers Guild"
(http://www.prowiki.org/wiki4d/wiki.cgi?GdcHacking).

I agree we can do a lot more to answer people's questions before they ask them,
but I'm not sure where we could put the info to make sure they find it. :(

jcc7

nick <nick.atamas gmail.com> writes:

Yves Jacoby wrote:
 On Thu, 09 Feb 2006 21:08:32 +0000, Kramer wrote:
 
 http://www.jelovic.com/articles/why_people_arent_using_haskell.htm

 [SNIP]

 -Kramer

 
 Isn't it a little early for that for the moment ? I've discovered D some
 weeks ago, and I found it pretty interesting at first, before I ran into
 [SNIP]
 
 I hope I haven't offended anybody and if I did, sorry.

Yes and Yes.

I think both of you are right. The world is ready for D, but D isn't
quite ready for the world*. Once D is ready, we have to make sure D
doesn't go the way of Haskell. I see two problems that need fixing:

1) Online presence - (See the thread "Time to release 1.0")
2) Organization - This is a big one. There are TWELVE gui libraries. If
the efforts that went into those were concentrated there could have been
2 or 3 really awesome(finished) libraries*. Someone needed to organize
the effort. This goes for all D community efforts, not just the GUI ones.




*D could be ready for use at my job very very soon. We write in-house
simulators for graphics chips. That doesn't require anything but the
standard libraries and a good IDE.

Yves Jacoby <kloune gmail.com> writes:

On Thu, 09 Feb 2006 23:05:53 -0800, nick wrote:

 Yves Jacoby wrote:
 On Thu, 09 Feb 2006 21:08:32 +0000, Kramer wrote:
 
 http://www.jelovic.com/articles/why_people_arent_using_haskell.htm

 [SNIP]

 -Kramer

 
 Isn't it a little early for that for the moment ? I've discovered D some
 weeks ago, and I found it pretty interesting at first, before I ran into
 [SNIP]
 
 I hope I haven't offended anybody and if I did, sorry.

 
 Yes and Yes.
 
 I think both of you are right. The world is ready for D, but D isn't
 quite ready for the world*. Once D is ready, we have to make sure D
 doesn't go the way of Haskell. I see two problems that need fixing:
 
 1) Online presence - (See the thread "Time to release 1.0")
 2) Organization - This is a big one. There are TWELVE gui libraries. If
 the efforts that went into those were concentrated there could have been
 2 or 3 really awesome(finished) libraries*. Someone needed to organize
 the effort. This goes for all D community efforts, not just the GUI ones.
 

 
 
 *D could be ready for use at my job very very soon. We write in-house
 simulators for graphics chips. That doesn't require anything but the
 standard libraries and a good IDE.


I don't know how the D community is organized internally for the moment,
but as a Gentoo user and sometimes patch submitter, seeing how good the
Gentoo community works, I would say a community based on the same schemes
would be good.

Decide on some responsible people for different parts of the organization
and have a lot of communication. For the moment, as I see it with D, 1
person is carrying all the effort for the compiler on windows,
one person is making it work on linux and many people are working on many
different libraries.

Another thing that could surely give D an advantage is to be portable, but
this would have to be decided at the top, such that windows and linux are
supported from the root on. This should from my point of view be the main
criteria to choose a library and go on developing it effectively. 

jcc7 <jcc7_member pathlink.com> writes:

In article <pan.2006.02.10.11.55.04.160245 gmail.com>, Yves Jacoby says...
I don't know how the D community is organized internally for the moment,
but as a Gentoo user and sometimes patch submitter, seeing how good the
Gentoo community works, I would say a community based on the same schemes
would be good.

We have a pretty simple organization. Walter is in charge of the D programming
language. Everyone else is invited to submit suggestions, bugs, patches, and new
modules for the library, but Walter is the only who makes the changes in the
language and the DMD compiler.

Decide on some responsible people for different parts of the organization
and have a lot of communication. For the moment, as I see it with D, 1
person is carrying all the effort for the compiler on windows,
one person is making it work on linux and many people are working on many
different libraries.

This has been suggested several times in the past (and for D to be successful,
it'll have to happen eventually), but until Walter himself asks for help,
there's only so much that the rest of us can do. You're right that someone is
helping out with gdc (and someone else with gdcmac). And there's also the
dsource.org projects. And everyone who helps with Wiki4D and the other wikis
benefits the D community. But Walter hasn't let go of the "official" stuff, and
I can mostly understand why: D is still pretty young and could easily be
destroyed by letting a committee get ahold of it too early.

jcc7

jcc7 <jcc7_member pathlink.com> writes:

In article <dshe0f$aai$1 digitaldaemon.com>, nick says...
2) Organization - This is a big one. There are TWELVE gui libraries. If
the efforts that went into those were concentrated there could have been
2 or 3 really awesome(finished) libraries*. Someone needed to organize
the effort. This goes for all D community efforts, not just the GUI ones.

Since some of the GUI libraries don't seem to have anyone working on them (and
even most active projects are still one-man operations anyway), the sum of the
hours available to pool to community library projects may not be as great as you
think. ;) I'm pretty sure no one is working on dig or unDig these days. If
L8night is still developing DFC, he hasn't mentioned it in a long time. Also, at
least one library is just for GTK+ fans. Another is just for MacOS fans. Several
seem to be limited to Windows. They don't share all of the same goals, so it
makes since that there are several projects.

But I still agree with your idea that we can probably accomplish more by working
together than by everyone doing their own thing. I think Walter made a good move
in this direction by proposing to make DWT the "standard" library.

Also, we should probably start editing our GUI library list
(http://www.prowiki.org/wiki4d/wiki.cgi?AvailableGuiLibraries) to reflect which
libraries have the best potential (or at least add some brief lists of positives
and negatives for each). That way people can quickly find what they're looking
for without their eyes glazing over.

jcc7

"Chris Miller" <chris dprogramming.com> writes:

On Fri, 10 Feb 2006 13:14:37 -0500, jcc7 <jcc7_member pathlink.com> wrote:

 Also, we should probably start editing our GUI library list
 (http://www.prowiki.org/wiki4d/wiki.cgi?AvailableGuiLibraries) to  
 reflect which
 libraries have the best potential (or at least add some brief lists of  
 positives
 and negatives for each). That way people can quickly find what they're  
 looking
 for without their eyes glazing over.

 jcc7

I don't like the Status column; difference between Early and Alpha /  
better is not known. I think it should distinctly be planning, pre-alpha,  
alpha, beta, release (perhaps with major version number), etc. Maybe the  
list should even be sorted by status instead.

Dave <Dave_member pathlink.com> writes:

In article <pan.2006.02.09.21.49.38.264161 gmail.com>, Yves Jacoby says...
- Compiler output is terrible.

Some specifics?

FWIW, I agree that there are certainly some areas (e.g.: floating point), but
generally DMD holds its own, and blows dynamic systems (Java, .NET) away for a
lot of things, at least from what I've seen.

Thanks,

- Dave

Niko Korhonen <niktheblak hotmail.com> writes:

Kramer wrote:
 P.S. Haskell is a pretty cool language.  I'm not proposing this, but if it were
 possible to have a partial functional language in D, wow!  That's just
 day-dreaming though.  D's sweet as it is. :)

Yep, Haskell and functional programming in general is definitely very 
cool. I think FP is probably going to have a much greater role in the 
future where the pressure for provable program correctness and safety 
keeps increasing.

But I'd say the ideological difference between functional and imperative 
programming is too great to merge the best of both worlds into D (I tend 
not to like imperative languages with 5% of FP added), and even if it 
would be possible to do it elegantly (like in Scala), it's too late now.

No one forbids us to use both paradigms though. It would be great if in 
the future D would be *the* imperative language which we could use in 
addition to FP.

-- 
Niko Korhonen
SW Developer

Stewart Gordon <smjg_1998 yahoo.com> writes:

Kramer wrote:
 http://www.jelovic.com/articles/why_people_arent_using_haskell.htm
 
 I came across the link above and I thought of D while reading it.  Basically,
 the author just ruminates over why Haskell hasn't taken off more and how it
 seems (he feels) the community has a lot to do with that reason.

<snip>

I guess what you need to remember is that D and Haskell are both 
distinct in purpose from Perl et al.  It reminds me of the quote at the 
beginning of the D website:

"It seems to me that most of the "new" programming languages fall into 
one of two categories: Those from academia with radical new paradigms 
and those from large corporations with a focus on RAD and the web. Maybe 
it's time for a new language born out of practical experience 
implementing compilers."

Stewart.

-- 
-----BEGIN GEEK CODE BLOCK-----
Version: 3.1
GCS/M d- s:- C++  a->--- UB  P+ L E  W++  N+++ o K-  w++  O? M V? PS- 
PE- Y? PGP- t- 5? X? R b DI? D G e++>++++ h-- r-- !y
------END GEEK CODE BLOCK------

My e-mail is valid but not my primary mailbox.  Please keep replies on 
the 'group where everyone may benefit.

Kramer <Kramer_member pathlink.com> writes:

In article <dsq5qf$25nf$1 digitaldaemon.com>, Stewart Gordon says...
Kramer wrote:
 http://www.jelovic.com/articles/why_people_arent_using_haskell.htm
 
 I came across the link above and I thought of D while reading it.  Basically,
 the author just ruminates over why Haskell hasn't taken off more and how it
 seems (he feels) the community has a lot to do with that reason.

<snip>

I guess what you need to remember is that D and Haskell are both 
distinct in purpose from Perl et al.  It reminds me of the quote at the 
beginning of the D website:

"It seems to me that most of the "new" programming languages fall into 
one of two categories: Those from academia with radical new paradigms 
and those from large corporations with a focus on RAD and the web. Maybe 
it's time for a new language born out of practical experience 
implementing compilers."

Stewart.

-- 
-----BEGIN GEEK CODE BLOCK-----
Version: 3.1
GCS/M d- s:- C++  a->--- UB  P+ L E  W++  N+++ o K-  w++  O? M V? PS- 
PE- Y? PGP- t- 5? X? R b DI? D G e++>++++ h-- r-- !y
------END GEEK CODE BLOCK------

My e-mail is valid but not my primary mailbox.  Please keep replies on 
the 'group where everyone may benefit.


Whole-heartedly agreed.

Again though, I wasn't necessarily comparing Haskell and D, just the community
aspect of it, but I'm assuming that understanding was implicit in your post. :)

And from above, I couldn't agree more on the pragmatic/idealistic balance.

-Kramer