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digitalmars.D - D beyond the specs

reply Chris <wendlec tcd.ie> writes:
Would it be possible to find out at DConf in Munich why exactly D 
is so popular in Germany (my impression) and in other countries 
of Europe (and that general post code) like France, Italy, GB, 
Romania and Russia etc.? I've always been intrigued by the fact 
that it originated in the US but that it's in "the old world" 
that a lot of enthusiasts (and contributors) are found. It's just 
because you would usually associate innovation with the "new 
world", but in this particular case D must have struck a chord 
with the old world. Is it marketing and economic / pragmatic 
factors that lead to poor adoption rates (and sometimes outright 
hostility) in the US. Maybe, but I think there's something in the 
engineering approach and the concepts that "talks" to us in the 
"old world". I think this is an interesting topic as regards both 
culture and technology. Any technology is embedded in and the 
product of a certain culture / way of thinking - and D seems to 
be a special case. Hint: there's a Ph.D. in it ;)
Mar 16 2018
next sibling parent reply psychoticRabbit <meagain meagain.com> writes:
On Friday, 16 March 2018 at 11:44:59 UTC, Chris wrote:

 Hint: there's a Ph.D. in it ;)


Hint: Do not write a Ph.D based on impressions ;-)
Mar 16 2018
parent reply Chris <wendlec tcd.ie> writes:
On Friday, 16 March 2018 at 12:43:03 UTC, psychoticRabbit wrote:

 On Friday, 16 March 2018 at 11:44:59 UTC, Chris wrote:

 Hint: there's a Ph.D. in it ;)


 Hint: Do not write a Ph.D based on impressions ;-)


Hint: Do not write a Ph.D. at all ;)
Mar 16 2018
parent reply bauss <jj_1337 live.dk> writes:
On Friday, 16 March 2018 at 13:51:03 UTC, Chris wrote:

 On Friday, 16 March 2018 at 12:43:03 UTC, psychoticRabbit wrote:

 On Friday, 16 March 2018 at 11:44:59 UTC, Chris wrote:

 Hint: there's a Ph.D. in it ;)


 Hint: Do not write a Ph.D based on impressions ;-)


 Hint: Do not write a Ph.D. at all ;)


Hint: Do not write
Mar 16 2018
parent Chris <wendlec tcd.ie> writes:
On Friday, 16 March 2018 at 14:18:16 UTC, bauss wrote:

 On Friday, 16 March 2018 at 13:51:03 UTC, Chris wrote:

 On Friday, 16 March 2018 at 12:43:03 UTC, psychoticRabbit 
 wrote:

 On Friday, 16 March 2018 at 11:44:59 UTC, Chris wrote:

 Hint: there's a Ph.D. in it ;)


 Hint: Do not write a Ph.D based on impressions ;-)


 Hint: Do not write a Ph.D. at all ;)


 Hint: Do not write


Hint: Just don't.
Mar 16 2018
prev sibling next sibling parent reply Guillaume Piolat <notthat email.com> writes:
On Friday, 16 March 2018 at 11:44:59 UTC, Chris wrote:

 Would it be possible to find out at DConf in Munich why exactly 
 D is so popular in Germany (my impression) and in other 
 countries of Europe (and that general post code) like France, 
 Italy, GB, Romania and Russia etc.?


Made-up theory that probably isn't worth anything without 
measurements:

In providing an improvement over C++, including more safety and 
GC, D (unwillingly) positionned itself being spiritual successor 
in the Wirth's family of language. And Niklaus Wirth was from 
Switzerland so _perhaps_ the nearby territory is already more 
favourable to alternatives native languages.

Let the speculation begin!
Mar 16 2018
parent Joakim <dlang joakim.fea.st> writes:
On Friday, 16 March 2018 at 14:45:28 UTC, Guillaume Piolat wrote:

 On Friday, 16 March 2018 at 11:44:59 UTC, Chris wrote:

 Would it be possible to find out at DConf in Munich why 
 exactly D is so popular in Germany (my impression) and in 
 other countries of Europe (and that general post code) like 
 France, Italy, GB, Romania and Russia etc.?


 Made-up theory that probably isn't worth anything without 
 measurements:

 In providing an improvement over C++, including more safety and 
 GC, D (unwillingly) positionned itself being spiritual 
 successor in the Wirth's family of language. And Niklaus Wirth 
 was from Switzerland so _perhaps_ the nearby territory is 
 already more favourable to alternatives native languages.

 Let the speculation begin!


Huh, that's pretty much what I was going to say,  particularly 
with Paulo always bringing up Oberon in here. :)

Let me add to the theory: the US private fund-raising enviroment 
was quicker to take risks with such quick-and-dirty tech, which 
led to Sun and Microsoft pushing UNIX and Windows and C and C++ 
to global dominance.  For example, the Silicon Valley investors, 
used to putting millions into chips, quickly starting dumping 
money into these software startups too:

https://stratechery.com/2018/lessons-from-spotify/

The current wave of iOS/Android and Obj-c/Java is merely the next 
iteration from Silicon Valley.

However, let me posit a change in the environment that now favors 
different kinds of tech. I'd argue open source is a much more 
powerful force these days than those prior factors. Rather than a 
single company driving a language or OS, you have to have many 
contributors, both companies and individuals, for open source or 
you'll get swamped by the crowd, which is why Android and 
Java/Swift have been mostly open-sourced.

This led to the OSS scripting languages that focused on ease of 
use- python, ruby, etc.- and a race to the bottom, ie javascript 
and php. It's now leading to thoughtful attempts to dislodge 
C/C++: D, Nim, Rust, Swift, Crystal, etc.

My point is that it appears that the time of local tech champions 
winning out is ending.  With open source, all of us all over the 
world can now take part in building out the foundational tech. :)
Mar 16 2018
prev sibling next sibling parent reply Paulo Pinto <pjmlp progtools.org> writes:
On Friday, 16 March 2018 at 11:44:59 UTC, Chris wrote:

 Would it be possible to find out at DConf in Munich why exactly 
 D is so popular in Germany (my impression) and in other 
 countries of Europe (and that general post code) like France, 
 Italy, GB, Romania and Russia etc.? I've always been intrigued 
 by the fact that it originated in the US but that it's in "the 
 old world" that a lot of enthusiasts (and contributors) are 
 found. It's just because you would usually associate innovation 
 with the "new world", but in this particular case D must have 
 struck a chord with the old world. Is it marketing and economic 
 / pragmatic factors that lead to poor adoption rates (and 
 sometimes outright hostility) in the US. Maybe, but I think 
 there's something in the engineering approach and the concepts 
 that "talks" to us in the "old world". I think this is an 
 interesting topic as regards both culture and technology. Any 
 technology is embedded in and the product of a certain culture 
 / way of thinking - and D seems to be a special case. Hint: 
 there's a Ph.D. in it ;)


Well, Algol, Pascal, Oberon, Component Pascal, VHDL, Ada are all 
examples of programming languages successfully used in Europe, 
while having adoption issues on US.

Even Delphi is still having regular conferences and magazine 
articles here in Germany.

Maybe we care more about enforced code quality? :)
Mar 16 2018
next sibling parent reply Chris <wendlec tcd.ie> writes:
On Friday, 16 March 2018 at 14:50:26 UTC, Paulo Pinto wrote:

 Well, Algol, Pascal, Oberon, Component Pascal, VHDL, Ada are 
 all examples of programming languages successfully used in 
 Europe, while having adoption issues on US.

 Even Delphi is still having regular conferences and magazine 
 articles here in Germany.


Now that's interesting, so maybe there is a pattern or a quality 
those languages have in common.


 Maybe we care more about enforced code quality? :)


Now, this an interesting point. Mind you, Python (forced 
indentation) is also a European language. "Quick and dirty" is 
more common in the US in the sense that they don't philosophize 
about things but just do them and see what happens (that's why 
they are often ahead of Europe when it comes to technology). 
There are loads of good ideas that never made it past the 
meetings, because they weren't "perfect" yet, while in the US 
they just did it and improved it later. Is this also the reason 
why D sometimes suffers from the "the perfect is the enemy of the 
good" syndrome?

 Guillaume
Theories are always made up, else they wouldn't be _theories_ ;)
Mar 16 2018
parent reply bachmeier <no spam.net> writes:
On Friday, 16 March 2018 at 15:14:08 UTC, Chris wrote:

 On Friday, 16 March 2018 at 14:50:26 UTC, Paulo Pinto wrote:

 Well, Algol, Pascal, Oberon, Component Pascal, VHDL, Ada are 
 all examples of programming languages successfully used in 
 Europe, while having adoption issues on US.

 Even Delphi is still having regular conferences and magazine 
 articles here in Germany.


 Now that's interesting, so maybe there is a pattern or a 
 quality those languages have in common.


Allow me to put on my economist hat and say you might be looking 
for explanations when none are required. Much of programming 
language adoption involves choosing languages others are using 
(see, well, any conversation about programming languages if you 
don't think it matters, or even the continued use of C++). There 
doesn't have to be a reason to settle on a particular language. 
Perfect example is the qwerty keyboard. There's nothing special 
about a qwerty keyboard. That is the arrangement of keys that 
some guy randomly chose many decades back. We continue to use 
qwerty because that's what we use - not for any particular reason.
Mar 16 2018
parent reply jmh530 <john.michael.hall gmail.com> writes:
On Friday, 16 March 2018 at 16:02:07 UTC, bachmeier wrote:

 Allow me to put on my economist hat and say you might be 
 looking for explanations when none are required. Much of 
 programming language adoption involves choosing languages 
 others are using (see, well, any conversation about programming 
 languages if you don't think it matters, or even the continued 
 use of C++). There doesn't have to be a reason to settle on a 
 particular language. Perfect example is the qwerty keyboard. 
 There's nothing special about a qwerty keyboard. That is the 
 arrangement of keys that some guy randomly chose many decades 
 back. We continue to use qwerty because that's what we use - 
 not for any particular reason.


We use qwerty because that's what the first commercially 
successful typewriter used. When computers came about, they 
needed to get people to transition over. Keeping qwerty was the 
optimal decision because of marginal costs and marginal benefits, 
not just random decisions.

Its creator didn't choose it randomly. He put the keys that were 
most common where it was easiest to get at them, but it jammed if 
people were typing too quickly so he made you type the most 
common letters with your left hand instead of right.

Some people bring up the Dvorak keyboard, but the evidence that 
it was better was scant and the marginal benefit of switching was 
too small to justify the cost.
Mar 16 2018
next sibling parent =?UTF-8?Q?Ali_=c3=87ehreli?= <acehreli yahoo.com> writes:
On 03/16/2018 09:18 AM, jmh530 wrote:

 On Friday, 16 March 2018 at 16:02:07 UTC, bachmeier wrote:



 Much of programming language
 adoption involves choosing languages others are using




Agreed. In my case, "others" have been people who I respected or 
happened to be my close friends. Over the years, I've become less prone 
to crowd influence (or they are so successful that I merely think so. :))


 Some people bring up the Dvorak keyboard, but the evidence that it was
 better was scant and the marginal benefit of switching was too small to
 justify the cost.


I've switched to Dvorak I think 18 years ago when I started having aches 
on my arms. I can't argue that Dvorak was the reason because I changed 
two more things at the same time: split keyboard and Emacs for its word 
completion feature (so that I would type less). In the end I'm weirder 
because I use Dvorak... and Emacs... and D... and spaces... and no 
external monitor... and too many other things... :o)

Ali
Mar 16 2018
prev sibling parent reply bachmeier <no spam.net> writes:
On Friday, 16 March 2018 at 16:18:55 UTC, jmh530 wrote:


 We use qwerty because that's what the first commercially 
 successful typewriter used. When computers came about, they 
 needed to get people to transition over. Keeping qwerty was the 
 optimal decision because of marginal costs and marginal 
 benefits, not just random decisions.

 Its creator didn't choose it randomly. He put the keys that 
 were most common where it was easiest to get at them, but it 
 jammed if people were typing too quickly so he made you type 
 the most common letters with your left hand instead of right.

 Some people bring up the Dvorak keyboard, but the evidence that 
 it was better was scant and the marginal benefit of switching 
 was too small to justify the cost.


The point is that there is no "fundamental" reason someone using 
a computer uses a qwerty keyboard. If you are to ask "what makes 
the qwerty keyboard the best choice for someone using a 
computer?" you are not going to have any luck finding the answer 
(or worse, you will find an answer after sufficient data mining). 
Similarly for programming language usage. There may have been 
perfectly good reasons for the early adopters of D, but it's not 
going to help to look for features of the D language that fit 
certain cultures better. It may be as simple as someone getting 
introduced to the D language because of a typo in a Google search.
Mar 16 2018
parent reply jmh530 <john.michael.hall gmail.com> writes:
On Friday, 16 March 2018 at 19:15:16 UTC, bachmeier wrote:

 The point is that there is no "fundamental" reason someone 
 using a computer uses a qwerty keyboard. If you are to ask 
 "what makes the qwerty keyboard the best choice for someone 
 using a computer?" you are not going to have any luck finding 
 the answer (or worse, you will find an answer after sufficient 
 data mining). Similarly for programming language usage. There 
 may have been perfectly good reasons for the early adopters of 
 D, but it's not going to help to look for features of the D 
 language that fit certain cultures better. It may be as simple 
 as someone getting introduced to the D language because of a 
 typo in a Google search.


Your "fundamental" reasons are more like "technical" reasons than 
"economic" reasons.

Should a large company buy qwerty keyboards or some other kind? 
Should a worker invest time in learning how to use a qwerty 
keyboard or some other kind? Those are questions of economic 
decision-making. The question that is relevant to decision-makers 
is rarely about "what keyboard layout is best." Rather it is, how 
much marginal benefit is there in investing time in learning to 
use a qwerty keyboard vs. another kind and what do I have to give 
up in order to obtain that benefit. If the marginal benefit of 
learning the standard keyboard layout is larger than some other 
kind and the cost is approximately the same, then everyone 
(except some iconoclasts) are going to learn qwerty.

This sort of analysis applies to programming languages in exactly 
the same way. If I'm a company, do I build products using 
language X or language Y. If I'm a person, do I spend N hours 
learning language X or language Y (or do the next best thing you 
can do...March Madness?). What if I already know language X? Then 
it's pure marginal cost to learn language Y. C programmers don't 
just switch to D or Rust or whatever the moment they see it has 
some "technical" features that are better. That's not what we 
observe. The marginal benefit has to exceed the marginal cost.
Mar 16 2018
parent Ola Fosheim =?UTF-8?B?R3LDuHN0YWQ=?= <ola.fosheim.grostad gmail.com> writes:
On Friday, 16 March 2018 at 22:25:50 UTC, jmh530 wrote:

 This sort of analysis applies to programming languages in 
 exactly the same way. If I'm a company, do I build products 
 using language X or language Y. If I'm a person, do I spend N 
 hours learning language X or language Y (or do the next best 
 thing you can do...March Madness?). What if I already know 
 language X? Then it's pure marginal cost to learn language Y.


For me I'd say learning the language is the low cost. The high 
cost is in finding the tooling, the eco system, maintaining the 
configuration and being sure that it is supported over time and 
that it can target the platform I am likely to be interested in 
(now and an in the future).

So, I write toy programs for new languages to see what they are 
like out of curiosity, but I am not likely to adopt any language 
that doesn't have a dedicated IDE. I'm not interested in taking a 
hit on tooling-related costs.

That last part has actually makes me reluctant to adopt Rust, 
Dart and Angular. So I'd say the threshold for moving from 
"non-critical" usage to "critical" usage is quit high.

On the other hand I have a lot less resistance to adopting 
TypeScript, since it is a fairly thin layer over Javascript. Thus 
I can easily move away from it if it turns out to be limiting 
down the road.


 C programmers don't just switch to D or Rust or whatever the 
 moment they see it has some "technical" features that are 
 better. That's not what we observe. The marginal benefit has to 
 exceed the marginal cost.


Actually, I'd say no marginal benefit is worth moving away from a 
platform with quality tooling.

So you have to win on productivity and performance (memory, 
portability, speed).
Mar 17 2018
prev sibling next sibling parent reply Ola Fosheim =?UTF-8?B?R3LDuHN0YWQ=?= <ola.fosheim.grostad gmail.com> writes:
On Friday, 16 March 2018 at 14:50:26 UTC, Paulo Pinto wrote:

 Well, Algol, Pascal, Oberon, Component Pascal, VHDL, Ada are 
 all examples of programming languages successfully used in 
 Europe, while having adoption issues on US.


There are some historical roots, I believe. In the 60s and 70s 
computing was so expensive that government funding was a driving 
force. Since each nation then also wanted to have their own 
computing industry they favour national companies (and thus 
employment), so each nation had their own CPU/hardware 
architecture and eco system. And Europe has many many nations... 
So quite a heterogenous computing environment... :-P

The US has a much bigger internal market and some key big players 
early on ("nobody has been fired for picking IBM"). They also 
have many large corporation that could sustain the cost of 
establishing a commercial computing sector.

Not sure how that works out today, though, as there is no longer 
a strong focus on national computing industries (unless you count 
Apple and Microsoft as such). Asia has run away with the hardware 
and development software has become less and less 
proprietary/national each decade.

My perception is that there is a difference between academic 
research oriented institutions and more rural engineering 
institutions. The former would focus more on language qualities 
(surprisingly University of Oslo is now switching from Java to 
Python, probably because it used a lot in data analysis), while 
the latter would focus more on business marketable languages 
(C++).

Anyway, cultural change is slow. Even though the 70s is far away, 
it still probably has an effect on culture and attitudes in 
universities and the tech sector.

Also, since most applications are no longer CPU bound there 
should be much more opportunity for trying new options today than 
10-20 years ago.
Mar 17 2018
parent Ola Fosheim =?UTF-8?B?R3LDuHN0YWQ=?= <ola.fosheim.grostad gmail.com> writes:
On Saturday, 17 March 2018 at 08:48:45 UTC, Ola Fosheim Grøstad 
wrote:

 Anyway, cultural change is slow. Even though the 70s is far 
 away, it still probably has an effect on culture and attitudes 
 in universities and the tech sector.


In the late 80s I was quite surprised that Danish computing mags 
(for hobbyists) wrote a lot about a language I had never heard of 
before:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COMAL

I am sure there has been other similar trends in other European 
countries.
Mar 17 2018
prev sibling parent Guillaume Piolat <notthat email.com> writes:
On Friday, 16 March 2018 at 14:50:26 UTC, Paulo Pinto wrote:

 Well, Algol, Pascal, Oberon, Component Pascal, VHDL, Ada are 
 all examples of programming languages successfully used in 
 Europe, while having adoption issues on US.


It's even stranger for Ada because AFAIK it was invented for US 
government needs.
Mar 17 2018
prev sibling next sibling parent reply Radu <void null.pt> writes:
On Friday, 16 March 2018 at 11:44:59 UTC, Chris wrote:

 Would it be possible to find out at DConf in Munich why exactly 
 D is so popular in Germany (my impression) and in other 
 countries of Europe (and that general post code) like France, 
 Italy, GB, Romania and Russia etc.? I've always been intrigued 
 by the fact that it originated in the US but that it's in "the 
 old world" that a lot of enthusiasts (and contributors) are 
 found. It's just because you would usually associate innovation 
 with the "new world", but in this particular case D must have 
 struck a chord with the old world. Is it marketing and economic 
 / pragmatic factors that lead to poor adoption rates (and 
 sometimes outright hostility) in the US. Maybe, but I think 
 there's something in the engineering approach and the concepts 
 that "talks" to us in the "old world". I think this is an 
 interesting topic as regards both culture and technology. Any 
 technology is embedded in and the product of a certain culture 
 / way of thinking - and D seems to be a special case. Hint: 
 there's a Ph.D. in it ;)


Here's a half-assed theory :P

Maybe the name has something to do with it :D, Americans have 
always made fun about it, strong D jokes (no pun here) make it 
hard to talk about it with a straight face around your college 
dorm buddies. Also I assume no water cooler talks will go 
unnoticed when everyone talks about the D.

Anyhow, it is interesting that, at least apparently, there are 
more people involved with Dlang in Europe.
Mar 16 2018
parent =?UTF-8?Q?Ali_=c3=87ehreli?= <acehreli yahoo.com> writes:
On 03/16/2018 08:32 AM, Radu wrote:


 Maybe the name has something to do with it :D


Not about numerology, but for "priming" reasons I think names do have 
effect. For example, Germany's country letter is D. ;)

Thinking back, the fact that my daughter's name starts with D may have a 
positive effect on my impression of D. (My son's name starts with D as 
well but in his case it was to match it to my daughter's name. :) )

Ali
Mar 16 2018
prev sibling next sibling parent Jonathan M Davis <newsgroup.d jmdavisprog.com> writes:
On Friday, March 16, 2018 11:44:59 Chris via Digitalmars-d wrote:

 Would it be possible to find out at DConf in Munich why exactly D
 is so popular in Germany (my impression) and in other countries
 of Europe (and that general post code) like France, Italy, GB,
 Romania and Russia etc.? I've always been intrigued by the fact
 that it originated in the US but that it's in "the old world"
 that a lot of enthusiasts (and contributors) are found. It's just
 because you would usually associate innovation with the "new
 world", but in this particular case D must have struck a chord
 with the old world. Is it marketing and economic / pragmatic
 factors that lead to poor adoption rates (and sometimes outright
 hostility) in the US. Maybe, but I think there's something in the
 engineering approach and the concepts that "talks" to us in the
 "old world". I think this is an interesting topic as regards both
 culture and technology. Any technology is embedded in and the
 product of a certain culture / way of thinking - and D seems to
 be a special case. Hint: there's a Ph.D. in it ;)


Walter mentioned at a dconf a while back that some of them had been
discussing it, and they decided that it was because all of the cars in
Germany have a sticker of the letter D on them (for Deutschland). :)

- Jonathan M Davis
Mar 16 2018
prev sibling next sibling parent user1234 <user1234 12.nl> writes:
On Friday, 16 March 2018 at 11:44:59 UTC, Chris wrote:

 Would it be possible to find out at DConf in Munich why exactly 
 D is so popular in Germany (my impression) and in other 
 countries of Europe (and that general post code) like France, 
 Italy, GB, Romania and Russia etc.? I've always been intrigued 
 by the fact that it originated in the US but that it's in "the 
 old world" that a lot of enthusiasts (and contributors) are 
 found.


This has been already discussed (a bit)... Follow answers from 
this message.

https://forum.dlang.org/post/ylkfeeywaqgjppeiqkzb forum.dlang.org
Mar 16 2018
prev sibling next sibling parent lurker <lurker lurker.com> writes:
On Friday, 16 March 2018 at 11:44:59 UTC, Chris wrote:

 [...]


easy code readability, few keywords, well defined and predictable 
(ex. ebnf)
well D is all - but that. i can't get anyone in our company to 
use it even for little stuff.
Mar 16 2018
prev sibling next sibling parent reply =?UTF-8?B?QXVyw6lsaWVu?= Plazzotta <azerty protonmail.com> writes:
On Friday, 16 March 2018 at 11:44:59 UTC, Chris wrote:

 Would it be possible to find out at DConf in Munich why exactly 
 D is so popular in Germany (my impression) and in other 
 countries of Europe (and that general post code) like France, 
 Italy, GB, Romania and Russia etc.?


To the best of my knowledge, there is currently no job offer in D 
programming in France. It is not even required/highlighted as a 
second/bonus skill to apply for a job.

Perhaps it is used within a research and development department 
of very few companies for very specific tasks but it's unheard of 
and the mentalities of top management won't change before long 
because we are a retarded population who needs a lot of safety 
nets and huge amounts of guarantees to actually to take action...

Also, french citizens don't like taking financial and 
technological risks, now adopting D for profesionnal use is a big 
one.

For example, to be hired full time as a Python programmer is 
possible for only 3-4 years and was regarded as an "exotic" 
language until now.

I know it's sucks...
Mar 16 2018
next sibling parent reply Guillaume Piolat <notthat email.com> writes:
On Friday, 16 March 2018 at 18:38:44 UTC, Aurélien Plazzotta 
wrote:

 Also, french citizens don't like taking financial and 
 technological risks, now adopting D for professionnal use is a 
 big one.


A friend of mine has heard about D for about ten years. I've been 
bothering people for a while.

At last dinner we realized two among the table were full-time D 
programmers, and this friend's own brother works with Laeeth. So 
now he now has 3 acquaintances that use D professionally, and are 
enthusiastic.
I don't think such a meal is common in France, just a data point.

Only then he _started asking questions_ about D and what you 
could do, etc.

While France is all about status (titles, living well over your 
means), and people prefer to learn "high-status" languages, I 
guess this is the profile of late adopters everywhere.

Germany is hopefully different, it takes only one german to 
change a light bulb :)
Mar 17 2018
parent reply Laeeth Isharc <laeeth nospamlaeeth.com> writes:
On Saturday, 17 March 2018 at 16:26:27 UTC, Guillaume Piolat 
wrote:

 While France is all about status (titles, living well over your 
 means), and people prefer to learn "high-status" languages, I 
 guess this is the profile of late adopters everywhere.


Yes, status seems one of the most important things for normal 
people.

But there's a repeating pattern in life.  A small group, drawn to 
do something for intrinsic reasons starts to create something.  
And they get no face because it seems completely unrealistic and 
in truth the odds are very much against success.  But they create 
something excellent because they care about intrinsic reasons and 
not social factors.  And some people start to take notice, but 
it's still more or less a fringe but interesting project.  And it 
stays that way until the world changes, and changes in a way that 
looks obvious with hindsight but nobody really expected at the 
time.  At that point what's important changes and the project 
starts to become popular.  Then people more ambitiously than 
intrinsically motivated start to be drawn by what's now obvious 
and the project starts to be popular, and yet with that 
popularity comes a change in its nature and sometimes people 
think back to the old days.

So I think that pattern might apply to D, and if that's right one 
might as well focus on the challenges before one and enjoy the 
benefits from the present makeup of the community.  Because as 
adoption grows eventually the makeup will change too.

If you're good and care about what's important, eventually status 
comes to you.  And now you've got more problems to worry about.  
But life isn't about banishing problems, but overcoming them.
Mar 17 2018
parent greentea <greentea gmail.com> writes:
On Saturday, 17 March 2018 at 20:17:17 UTC, Laeeth Isharc wrote:


 ...  A small group, drawn to do something for intrinsic reasons 
 starts to create something.  And they get no face because it 
 seems completely unrealistic and in truth the odds are very 
 much against success.  But they create something excellent 
 because they care about intrinsic reasons and not social 
 factors.  And some people start to take notice, but it's still 
 more or less a fringe but interesting project.  And it stays 
 that way until the world changes, and changes in a way that 
 looks obvious with hindsight but nobody really expected at the 
 time.  At that point what's important changes and the project 
 starts to become popular.  Then people more ambitiously than 
 intrinsically motivated start to be drawn by what's now obvious 
 and the project starts to be popular, and yet with that 
 popularity comes a change in its nature and sometimes people 
 think back to the old days. ...


Just like the Linux project - started by a Finnish guy.
Mar 17 2018
prev sibling parent reply Laeeth Isharc <laeeth nospamlaeeth.com> writes:
On Friday, 16 March 2018 at 18:38:44 UTC, Aurélien Plazzotta 
wrote:

 On Friday, 16 March 2018 at 11:44:59 UTC, Chris wrote:

 Would it be possible to find out at DConf in Munich why 
 exactly D is so popular in Germany (my impression) and in 
 other countries of Europe (and that general post code) like 
 France, Italy, GB, Romania and Russia etc.?


 To the best of my knowledge, there is currently no job offer in 
 D programming in France. It is not even required/highlighted as 
 a second/bonus skill to apply for a job.

 Perhaps it is used within a research and development department 
 of very few companies for very specific tasks but it's unheard 
 of and the mentalities of top management won't change before 
 long because we are a retarded population who needs a lot of 
 safety nets and huge amounts of guarantees to actually to take 
 action...

 Also, french citizens don't like taking financial and 
 technological risks, now adopting D for profesionnal use is a 
 big one.


And yet in Paris lives a man, presumably a French citizen, who 
was working on a cryptocurrency scaling startup last dconf and 
that ended up being part of the path towards launching Bitcoin 
Cash.  So some French citizens don't seem to mind taking risks or 
trying new things, and if there is a dampening of entrepreneurial 
spirits it might be the government and culture.  That's just one 
example, but the outliers can often tell you more than those in 
the centre of the distribution.

It seems like it's already beginning to change slowly.  It wasn't 
long ago that speaking about the French startup scene was more 
like the punchline to a joke.  Today it's something real and I 
think will grow further from here.

Things change slowly in the beginning.  Top management aren't the 
ones to start doing something creative unless they are a highly 
unusual kind of firm.  It's people who can decide or who don't 
need to ask anyone's permission that are the early adopters.

Anyway I asked Walter about why so many Germans in the D 
community.  No final answer.  It's interesting that Walter is of 
German descent.  A controversial topic, but in my experience what 
you are from shapes who you are, how you think and what you 
value.  And receptivity to a particular way of doing things isn't 
uniform across the world.
Mar 17 2018
next sibling parent Walter Bright <newshound2 digitalmars.com> writes:
On 3/17/2018 1:02 PM, Laeeth Isharc wrote:

 Anyway I asked Walter about why so many Germans in the D community.  No final 
 answer.  It's interesting that Walter is of German descent.  A controversial 
 topic, but in my experience what you are from shapes who you are, how you
think 
 and what you value.  And receptivity to a particular way of doing things
isn't 
 uniform across the world.


I'm German, Dutch, and English. But I grew up in America, so culturally I'm 
American.
Mar 17 2018
prev sibling parent Chris <wendlec tcd.ie> writes:
On Saturday, 17 March 2018 at 20:02:01 UTC, Laeeth Isharc wrote:


 And yet in Paris lives a man, presumably a French citizen, who 
 was working on a cryptocurrency scaling startup last dconf and 
 that ended up being part of the path towards launching Bitcoin 
 Cash.  So some French citizens don't seem to mind taking risks 
 or trying new things, and if there is a dampening of 
 entrepreneurial spirits it might be the government and culture.
  That's just one example, but the outliers can often tell you 
 more than those in the centre of the distribution.


Yes, the government and beaurocrats in the administration etc. 
more often than not dampen the entrepreneurial spirit in Europe. 
Then again, people prefer security over freedom, because it 
involves risk, this attitude in turn feeds the "riskophobic" 
nanny state which in turn feeds  people's risk-aversion (hen or 
egg?) and so on till the whole thing collapses or people get sick 
and tired of it.


 Things change slowly in the beginning.  Top management aren't 
 the ones to start doing something creative unless they are a 
 highly unusual kind of firm.  It's people who can decide or who 
 don't need to ask anyone's permission that are the early 
 adopters.


A common conversation when the top management is "confronted" 
with a new idea:

Manager: "Has anyone ever done that before?"
Foot soldier: "Err, no. It's a new idea."
Manager: "Then we won't do it either!"


 Anyway I asked Walter about why so many Germans in the D 
 community.  No final answer.  It's interesting that Walter is 
 of German descent.  A controversial topic, but in my experience 
 what you are from shapes who you are, how you think and what 
 you value.



 And receptivity to a particular way of doing things isn't 
 uniform across the world.


I agree. That's why I started this thread. I already suspected 
that Walter had German anscestors, but didn't dare to ask (you 
know how things are these days ;) And maybe herein lies part of 
the answer. Maybe that's why D is a mixture of pragmatism 
(Anglo-Saxon) and (sometimes obsessive) attention to detail 
(German). And maybe this tension between pragmatism and 
perfectionism attracts more and more programmers as it not only 
reflects the problems they encounter in their daily work, but 
opens up a whole new field of possibilities / opportunities both 
in terms of language development and problem solving.

Other things that have been said so far are very interesting, 
i.e. the recent developments that leave languages like D some 
space to breathe. I've noticed that it is increasingly harder for 
big corporations to force their technologies (i.e. languages) on 
programmers, for various reasons, one of which is the certainly 
the fact that many programmers and coders have become wary and / 
or tired of language hypes - and the bitter experience that you 
always end up in a cul-de-sac at whose end sits a stubborn 
committee that develops a given language along ideological lines 
and not according to what people need.
Mar 20 2018
prev sibling next sibling parent reply Walter Bright <newshound2 digitalmars.com> writes:
On 3/16/2018 4:44 AM, Chris wrote:

 Would it be possible to find out at DConf in Munich why exactly D is so
popular 
 in Germany (my impression) and in other countries of Europe (and that general 
 post code) like France, Italy, GB, Romania and Russia etc.?


My old company's product, Zortech C++, was also very popular in Germany, 
England, and Japan. I don't know why.
Mar 16 2018
next sibling parent reply Chris <wendlec tcd.ie> writes:
On Friday, 16 March 2018 at 19:27:40 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:

 On 3/16/2018 4:44 AM, Chris wrote:

 Would it be possible to find out at DConf in Munich why 
 exactly D is so popular in Germany (my impression) and in 
 other countries of Europe (and that general post code) like 
 France, Italy, GB, Romania and Russia etc.?


 My old company's product, Zortech C++, was also very popular in 
 Germany, England, and Japan. I don't know why.


Most interesting! I'm not kidding. Is it 'wow it's from the US', 
or something else? Genuine question. I ain't asking for fun. 
There's more to business and technology than meets the eye.
Mar 16 2018
parent reply Ola Fosheim =?UTF-8?B?R3LDuHN0YWQ=?= <ola.fosheim.grostad gmail.com> writes:
On Friday, 16 March 2018 at 22:43:57 UTC, Chris wrote:

 Most interesting! I'm not kidding. Is it 'wow it's from the 
 US', or something else? Genuine question. I ain't asking for 
 fun. There's more to business and technology than meets the eye.


I don't know about compilers specifically, but the big 
distributors in Europe charged some hefty margins on their 
imports. So pricing in US was often much lower than here...

So smaller competitors with ads in national hobbyist computing 
mags had a relatively easy marketing channel.
Mar 17 2018
next sibling parent Ola Fosheim =?UTF-8?B?R3LDuHN0YWQ=?= <ola.fosheim.grostad gmail.com> writes:
On Saturday, 17 March 2018 at 09:31:58 UTC, Ola Fosheim Grøstad 
wrote:

 I don't know about compilers specifically, but the big 
 distributors in Europe charged some hefty margins on their 
 imports. So pricing in US was often much lower than here...


When I think of it, the distributors probably only cared about 
corporate customers for software development (and my impression 
is that distributors often didn't know much about computers and 
software anyway). Since distributors didn't know better they 
hired young computer enthusiasts to work for them, which cracked 
the software protections and spread it among their friends before 
the software hit the stores...

So European computer enthusiasts had easy access to bootleg 
copies of common software. Copying was rampant for cultural 
reasons, which included common fair use clauses that allowed 
copying between individuals and friends. By rampant, I mean 
people copied >90% of the software they used.

I knew of more people that bought "alternative dev tooling" (at 
reasonable pricing) than the offerings  from big players (which 
often would cost more than the computer hardware, and as a 
recurring cost...). There was also an attitude that "if the price 
is unreasonable high then it is perfectly reasonable and moral to 
distribute bootleg copies of it".
Mar 17 2018
prev sibling parent reply =?UTF-8?Q?Ali_=c3=87ehreli?= <acehreli yahoo.com> writes:
On 03/17/2018 02:31 AM, Ola Fosheim Grøstad wrote:


 I don't know about compilers specifically, but the big distributors in
 Europe charged some hefty margins on their imports. So pricing in US was
 often much lower than here...


It may not be distributor greed: I was one of the founders of a 
WordPerfect distributor in Turkey in around 1991. When retail price was 
around $500, we were paying around $400 to WordPerfect when US consumers 
were getting it for something like $120 at retail shops. (I cannot be 
sure about the amounts after all those years.)

I don't know whether it was the US government rules or WordPerfect rules 
but they simply could not sell us anywhere near what US consumers were 
paying. $500 in Turkey is still an impossibly high price.

We survived for a while selling to large companies.

Ali
Mar 18 2018
parent Ola Fosheim =?UTF-8?B?R3LDuHN0YWQ=?= <ola.fosheim.grostad gmail.com> writes:
On Sunday, 18 March 2018 at 07:06:37 UTC, Ali Çehreli wrote:

 It may not be distributor greed: I was one of the founders of a 
 WordPerfect distributor in Turkey in around 1991.


Cool :-)


 I don't know whether it was the US government rules or 
 WordPerfect rules but they simply could not sell us anywhere 
 near what US consumers were paying. $500 in Turkey is still an 
 impossibly high price.


*nods*  I find it kinda interesting that the global distribution 
that came with the Internet may have made it more difficult to 
differentiate prices, both ways.  Also harder to sell with lower 
margins in 3rd world countries.  E.g. on Amazon you can now find 
cheaper reprints of textbooks targeting universities in India...

Of course, localized software (language barrier) may still be 
used to differentiate.
Mar 18 2018
prev sibling parent reply Arjan <arjan ask.me.to> writes:
On Friday, 16 March 2018 at 19:27:40 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:

 On 3/16/2018 4:44 AM, Chris wrote:

 Would it be possible to find out at DConf in Munich why 
 exactly D is so popular in Germany (my impression) and in 
 other countries of Europe (and that general post code) like 
 France, Italy, GB, Romania and Russia etc.?


 My old company's product, Zortech C++, was also very popular in 
 Germany, England, and Japan. I don't know why.


And a certain spot in the Netherlands, because at the time it 
outperformed all the others like Borland Watcom IBM/visual-age 
ms-visual-c++ and others at compilation speed and most of the 
time in execution speed as well. Besides since we used multiple 
compiler on our code base symantec/digitalmars often reported 
violations were the other happily accepted the code (and produced 
wrong code) And the incident response time from you was just 
marvelous, reported an issue, next morning a fixed compiler 
version in the emailbox!

Beside that, I really appreciated the so called IDDE and 
accompanied srcs of libs. It was imo much much better than VC++ 
at the time. Have used it for a very long time even after 
Symantec ditched it. (borland f***** up theirs by forcing the C++ 
builder upone us)
Mar 17 2018
parent Walter Bright <newshound2 digitalmars.com> writes:
On 3/17/2018 4:28 AM, Arjan wrote:

 On Friday, 16 March 2018 at 19:27:40 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:

 My old company's product, Zortech C++, was also very popular in Germany, 
 England, and Japan. I don't know why.


 
 And a certain spot in the Netherlands, because at the time it outperformed all 
 the others like Borland Watcom IBM/visual-age ms-visual-c++ and others at 
 compilation speed and most of the time in execution speed as well. Besides
since 
 we used multiple compiler on our code base symantec/digitalmars often reported 
 violations were the other happily accepted the code (and produced wrong code) 
 And the incident response time from you was just marvelous, reported an issue, 
 next morning a fixed compiler version in the emailbox!
 
 Beside that, I really appreciated the so called IDDE and accompanied srcs of 
 libs. It was imo much much better than VC++ at the time. Have used it for a
very 
 long time even after Symantec ditched it. (borland f***** up theirs by forcing 
 the C++ builder upone us)
 


Sounds a lot like D of today, too!

(Thanks for the kind words. I appreciate it!)
Mar 17 2018
prev sibling parent Thomas Mader <thomas.mader gmail.com> writes:
On Friday, 16 March 2018 at 11:44:59 UTC, Chris wrote:

 Would it be possible to find out at DConf in Munich why exactly 
 D is so popular in Germany (my impression) and in other 
 countries of Europe (and that general post code) like France, 
 Italy, GB, Romania and Russia etc.?


My guess is that it has much to do with simple luck.
It's like getting those Goldilock conditions. What I mean by that 
is described in the first couple minutes of this TED talk: 
https://www.ted.com/talks/david_christian_big_history

In communities those Goldilock conditions are not of physical 
nature but of social nature I guess.
For a movement/idea/programming language/... to grow big, it 
seems to be important to get the right people into it. The people 
who are that passionate about it that they put much afford into 
it to convince other people of the value of this new thing. The 
ones who are best candidates for something like that are the ones 
who are very communicative and have a large social net to 
popularize their things on.

What might have happend in Germany is exactly that. The starters 
of companies like Funkwerk, Sociomantic and the like saw value in 
D and decided to use it heavily. They were able to create a 
Goldilock condition by their use and gathered more people around 
it.
If you have more people it's more likely to get even bigger 
because the possibility of another even bigger Goldilock is 
increased. More people mean more connections to other people and 
the thing goes on and on.
In the US it was just not that lucky yet.

For sure there are technical facts to consider but if you follow 
trends, it doesn't always seem to be the crucial factor to choose 
something over the other in technical things.

So finding and convincing or at least introduce such important 
people to your new thing might always be the key thing to do.
Mar 17 2018