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digitalmars.D - Github and enthusiasm

reply Ola Fosheim =?UTF-8?B?R3LDuHN0YWQ=?= <ola.fosheim.grostad gmail.com> writes:
Not the best metric, but Githut 2.0 allows you to look at which 
language repos get the largest percentage of stars on github. So 
the ebb-and-flow of enthusiasm for a language to some extent:

https://madnight.github.io/githut/#/stars/2019/3

So, if you disable all the languages and click D, we can see that 
D has been very stable for the past 6 years. Which might be sign 
of a loyal user base, given the amount of new languages appearing.

Nim seems to be oscillating at around the same level as D right 
now. Difficult to say what the trend will be.  Crystal and Julia 
as well.

Pascal is for some reason growing?

Rust has been very uneven, but there is a sharp increase over the 
last year, good press perhaps? Whereas Go has been growing like a 
straight line for 7 years. I suspect keeping the language stable 
has been something organizations appreciate, more of a steady 
increase than any burst of enthusiasm for Go.

Dart is peaking like a rocket this year (probably because of 

as well, but with less growth than C++.

Swift on the other hand is tapering off. Why is that? Have people 
given up on Swift outside the iOS segment?

Functional languages like Haskell and Clojure seem to have a 
negative trend. Maybe other languages are cutting into their 
field (e.g. Kotlin which is growing because of Android, most 
likely).
Dec 07 2019
parent reply JN <666total wp.pl> writes:
On Saturday, 7 December 2019 at 19:15:34 UTC, Ola Fosheim Grøstad 
wrote:

 So, if you disable all the languages and click D, we can see 
 that D has been very stable for the past 6 years. Which might 
 be sign of a loyal user base, given the amount of new languages 
 appearing.


On the plus side, in few years we should be catching up with Ruby.

Rust going up doesn't surprise me. It's past its critical mass 
and it will only go up in the future. Many big companies are 
adopting it right now and there's a lot of work done with Rust in 
many projects, from Microsoft to Google. Also most work in Rust 

it reflected in Github stars.

Dart's dramatic rise is interesting. I attribute it to Flutter, 
but it's crazy how much up it went.

Pascal is interesting, because it has a very dedicated community, 
but they shelter themselves from the outside world for the most 
part.
Dec 07 2019
next sibling parent reply Ola Fosheim =?UTF-8?B?R3LDuHN0YWQ=?= <ola.fosheim.grostad gmail.com> writes:
On Saturday, 7 December 2019 at 20:41:37 UTC, JN wrote:

 On the plus side, in few years we should be catching up with 
 Ruby.


Is Ruby being swallowed up by Python perhaps?



 open-source world, so you'll see it reflected in Github stars.


Yes, the absolute values are not very informative, but the change 
over time can say something. So we can at least see that there is 



 Dart's dramatic rise is interesting. I attribute it to Flutter, 
 but it's crazy how much up it went.


Yes, dramatic! Flutter has 10000 forks and is the software 
project on github with 2nd most developers on github after vscode 
or so. ( 13000 github developers according to  
https://octoverse.github.com/ )



 Pascal is interesting, because it has a very dedicated 
 community, but they shelter themselves from the outside world 
 for the most part.


Yes, it is also interesting because there has been a drop in 
number of Pascal contributors:

https://www.openhub.net/languages/compare?language_name%5B%5D=pascal&measure=contributors

So, Pascal probably has a very loyal group of users.
Dec 07 2019
parent reply JN <666total wp.pl> writes:
On Saturday, 7 December 2019 at 21:38:16 UTC, Ola Fosheim Grøstad 
wrote:

 Is Ruby being swallowed up by Python perhaps?


Has been for quite some time. Ruby was never that popular outside 
of Ruby on Rails. For the most part, RoR was Ruby. But RoR is not 
as popular anymore, Python and other languages adopted similar 
ideas for web frameworks and ate Ruby's lunch. Outside of 
Homebrew on macOS and Jekyll, the blog engine, I am not aware of 
any popular Ruby usages in the wild nowadays.

Unlike Python, it completely missed the science/ML train too, so 
it will only get worse.


 So, Pascal probably has a very loyal group of users.


Pascal is kind of magical. It's been around almost as long as C, 
has fast compile times, good IDE and GUI story (mostly as legacy 
of Delphi). It also did many things right, such as no header 
files. But most of its community is hanging out on several forums 
(like the Lazarus project forums) and they don't have the social 
media/Github presence compared to other, newer languages).
Dec 07 2019
next sibling parent reply Paulo Pinto <pjmlp progtools.org> writes:
On Saturday, 7 December 2019 at 21:59:28 UTC, JN wrote:

 On Saturday, 7 December 2019 at 21:38:16 UTC, Ola Fosheim 
 Grøstad wrote:

 Is Ruby being swallowed up by Python perhaps?


 Has been for quite some time. Ruby was never that popular 
 outside of Ruby on Rails. For the most part, RoR was Ruby. But 
 RoR is not as popular anymore, Python and other languages 
 adopted similar ideas for web frameworks and ate Ruby's lunch. 
 Outside of Homebrew on macOS and Jekyll, the blog engine, I am 
 not aware of any popular Ruby usages in the wild nowadays.

 Unlike Python, it completely missed the science/ML train too, 
 so it will only get worse.


 So, Pascal probably has a very loyal group of users.


 Pascal is kind of magical. It's been around almost as long as 
 C, has fast compile times, good IDE and GUI story (mostly as 
 legacy of Delphi). It also did many things right, such as no 
 header files. But most of its community is hanging out on 
 several forums (like the Lazarus project forums) and they don't 
 have the social media/Github presence compared to other, newer 
 languages).


Pascal is so strong in Germany, that we keep having Delphi 
conferences.

https://entwickler-konferenz.de/

And it is a regular subject on .NET developers magazine

https://www.dotnetpro.de/delphi-959606.html


In in spite of all bad decisions from Borland, Embarcadero, and 
whoever owns it nowadays.

Although most now gather around FreePascal.

One of my biggest disappointments with Java and .NET, was 
expecting them to be more like Delphi and getting a VM, and lack 
of value types (on Java) instead.

Now taking almost 30 years to fix those wrong decisions, with the 
onus of backward compatibility.

Imagine how safer the computing would would be if they would have 
been like Delphi, with automatic memory management.

Sadly D might not have been a thing, on the other hand C and C++ 
would not have grown as they did, given that they are also picked 
up due to their AOT tooling and value types support.
Dec 08 2019
parent reply JN <666total wp.pl> writes:
On Monday, 9 December 2019 at 07:30:03 UTC, Paulo Pinto wrote:

 Imagine how safer the computing would would be if they would 
 have been like Delphi, with automatic memory management.


Do you have any links on the automatic memory management? 
Googling for "pascal memory management" mostly links to threads 
about how dreadful memory management in Pascal is :)
Dec 09 2019
next sibling parent reply Ola Fosheim =?UTF-8?B?R3LDuHN0YWQ=?= <ola.fosheim.grostad gmail.com> writes:
On Monday, 9 December 2019 at 08:55:13 UTC, JN wrote:

 On Monday, 9 December 2019 at 07:30:03 UTC, Paulo Pinto wrote:

 Imagine how safer the computing would would be if they would 
 have been like Delphi, with automatic memory management.


 Do you have any links on the automatic memory management? 
 Googling for "pascal memory management" mostly links to threads 
 about how dreadful memory management in Pascal is :)


Try to search for "delphi memory management"?

http://blog.marcocantu.com/blog/2018-october-Delphi-ARC-directions.html

It seems to be pretty much in the same situation as D. Locked 
down to GC + manual because of existing code bases.
Dec 09 2019
parent reply Ola Fosheim =?UTF-8?B?R3LDuHN0YWQ=?= <ola.fosheim.grostad gmail.com> writes:
On Monday, 9 December 2019 at 10:46:33 UTC, Ola Fosheim Grøstad 
wrote:

 On Monday, 9 December 2019 at 08:55:13 UTC, JN wrote:

 On Monday, 9 December 2019 at 07:30:03 UTC, Paulo Pinto wrote:

 Imagine how safer the computing would would be if they would 
 have been like Delphi, with automatic memory management.


 Do you have any links on the automatic memory management? 
 Googling for "pascal memory management" mostly links to 
 threads about how dreadful memory management in Pascal is :)


 Try to search for "delphi memory management"?

 http://blog.marcocantu.com/blog/2018-october-Delphi-ARC-directions.html

 It seems to be pretty much in the same situation as D. Locked 
 down to GC + manual because of existing code bases.


Well, no gc out of the box:

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/4440841/garbage-collection-in-delphi
Dec 09 2019
parent Ola Fosheim =?UTF-8?B?R3LDuHN0YWQ=?= <ola.fosheim.grostad gmail.com> writes:
Free Pascal has an interface-thing that allows you to create your 
own memory management types:

https://wiki.freepascal.org/management_operators
Dec 09 2019
prev sibling parent Paulo Pinto <pjmlp progtools.org> writes:
On Monday, 9 December 2019 at 08:55:13 UTC, JN wrote:

 On Monday, 9 December 2019 at 07:30:03 UTC, Paulo Pinto wrote:

 Imagine how safer the computing would would be if they would 
 have been like Delphi, with automatic memory management.


 Do you have any links on the automatic memory management? 
 Googling for "pascal memory management" mostly links to threads 
 about how dreadful memory management in Pascal is :)


You misunderstood me.

Like Delphi in features, plus having automatic memory management.

Basically having .NET Native in 2000, or Java being like Modula-3 
or Component Pascal/Active Oberon were.

Delphi itself only supports it partially, so strings management, 
reference counting for ARC on iDevice platforms and COM/UWP on 
Windows, and that is about it.
Dec 09 2019
prev sibling parent reply bachmeier <no spam.net> writes:
On Saturday, 7 December 2019 at 21:59:28 UTC, JN wrote:

 On Saturday, 7 December 2019 at 21:38:16 UTC, Ola Fosheim 
 Grøstad wrote:

 Is Ruby being swallowed up by Python perhaps?


 Has been for quite some time. Ruby was never that popular 
 outside of Ruby on Rails. For the most part, RoR was Ruby. But 
 RoR is not as popular anymore, Python and other languages 
 adopted similar ideas for web frameworks and ate Ruby's lunch. 
 Outside of Homebrew on macOS and Jekyll, the blog engine, I am 
 not aware of any popular Ruby usages in the wild nowadays.


Ruby's far from dead, and a lot more than just Homebrew and 
Jekyll. For obvious reasons, Basecamp uses it. Github and Gitlab 
both use it. Sinatra is still very popular as is the mail gem. 
Some others that come to mind are Chatwoot, Redmine, and 
OpenProject. There are tons of others. I'd be very happy if D 
could reach the popularity of Ruby.
Dec 09 2019
next sibling parent reply bachmeier <no spam.net> writes:
On Monday, 9 December 2019 at 14:12:39 UTC, bachmeier wrote:

 On Saturday, 7 December 2019 at 21:59:28 UTC, JN wrote:

 On Saturday, 7 December 2019 at 21:38:16 UTC, Ola Fosheim 
 Grøstad wrote:

 Is Ruby being swallowed up by Python perhaps?


 Has been for quite some time. Ruby was never that popular 
 outside of Ruby on Rails. For the most part, RoR was Ruby. But 
 RoR is not as popular anymore, Python and other languages 
 adopted similar ideas for web frameworks and ate Ruby's lunch. 
 Outside of Homebrew on macOS and Jekyll, the blog engine, I am 
 not aware of any popular Ruby usages in the wild nowadays.


 Ruby's far from dead, and a lot more than just Homebrew and 
 Jekyll. For obvious reasons, Basecamp uses it. Github and 
 Gitlab both use it. Sinatra is still very popular as is the 
 mail gem. Some others that come to mind are Chatwoot, Redmine, 
 and OpenProject. There are tons of others. I'd be very happy if 
 D could reach the popularity of Ruby.


I forgot Discourse
Dec 09 2019
parent Paulo Pinto <pjmlp progtools.org> writes:
On Monday, 9 December 2019 at 14:14:58 UTC, bachmeier wrote:

 On Monday, 9 December 2019 at 14:12:39 UTC, bachmeier wrote:

 On Saturday, 7 December 2019 at 21:59:28 UTC, JN wrote:

 On Saturday, 7 December 2019 at 21:38:16 UTC, Ola Fosheim 
 Grøstad wrote:

 Is Ruby being swallowed up by Python perhaps?


 Has been for quite some time. Ruby was never that popular 
 outside of Ruby on Rails. For the most part, RoR was Ruby. 
 But RoR is not as popular anymore, Python and other languages 
 adopted similar ideas for web frameworks and ate Ruby's 
 lunch. Outside of Homebrew on macOS and Jekyll, the blog 
 engine, I am not aware of any popular Ruby usages in the wild 
 nowadays.


 Ruby's far from dead, and a lot more than just Homebrew and 
 Jekyll. For obvious reasons, Basecamp uses it. Github and 
 Gitlab both use it. Sinatra is still very popular as is the 
 mail gem. Some others that come to mind are Chatwoot, Redmine, 
 and OpenProject. There are tons of others. I'd be very happy 
 if D could reach the popularity of Ruby.


 I forgot Discourse


You also forgot that Oracle, Red-Hat and IBM spend resources 
making Ruby JIT compilers, via Graal, Truffle, JRuby and RubyOMR 
projects.
Dec 09 2019
prev sibling parent reply Ola Fosheim =?UTF-8?B?R3LDuHN0YWQ=?= <ola.fosheim.grostad gmail.com> writes:
On Monday, 9 December 2019 at 14:12:39 UTC, bachmeier wrote:

 Ruby's far from dead, and a lot more than just Homebrew and 
 Jekyll. For obvious reasons, Basecamp uses it. Github and 
 Gitlab both use it. Sinatra is still very popular as is the


Yes, Ruby is twice as large as Go (roughly) in terms of projects 
that are being maintained, but much worse off than Python:

https://www.openhub.net/languages/compare?utf8=%E2%9C%93&measure=projects&language_name%5B%5D=python&language_name%5B%5D=ruby&language_name%5B%5D=golang

Enthusiasm is pointing the wrong way.

5 years ago Ruby had almost 9% of the stars on github, today 2%.
In the same timeframe Python has increased from 10% to 14%.

Ruby seems to be on the long tail, meaning existing code bases 
drive most of the activity. Not sure how that can change?

D has been very stable on github metrics for the past 6 years. 
Unlikely to change much unless it is made easier to use. (What 
got D attention in the beginning was that it was much easier to 
use than C++)
Dec 09 2019
next sibling parent reply Eugene Wissner <belka caraus.de> writes:
On Monday, 9 December 2019 at 14:45:54 UTC, Ola Fosheim Grøstad 
wrote:

 Ruby seems to be on the long tail, meaning existing code bases 
 drive most of the activity. Not sure how that can change?


Ruby 3 in a few weeks. Better performance, duck typing to help 
the IDEs, better concurrency and parallelism story.
Dec 09 2019
parent reply Martin Tschierschke <mt smartdolphin.de> writes:
On Monday, 9 December 2019 at 14:49:54 UTC, Eugene Wissner wrote:

 On Monday, 9 December 2019 at 14:45:54 UTC, Ola Fosheim Grøstad 
 wrote:

 Ruby seems to be on the long tail, meaning existing code bases 
 drive most of the activity. Not sure how that can change?


 Ruby 3 in a few weeks. Better performance, duck typing to help 
 the IDEs, better concurrency and parallelism story.


You are one yer to early! :-)

https://www.quora.com/When-will-Ruby-3-0-release

They say it will be December 2020.
Dec 11 2019
parent Eugene Wissner <belka caraus.de> writes:
On Wednesday, 11 December 2019 at 10:59:22 UTC, Martin 
Tschierschke wrote:

 On Monday, 9 December 2019 at 14:49:54 UTC, Eugene Wissner 
 wrote:

 On Monday, 9 December 2019 at 14:45:54 UTC, Ola Fosheim 
 Grøstad wrote:

 Ruby seems to be on the long tail, meaning existing code 
 bases drive most of the activity. Not sure how that can 
 change?


 Ruby 3 in a few weeks. Better performance, duck typing to help 
 the IDEs, better concurrency and parallelism story.


 You are one yer to early! :-)

 https://www.quora.com/When-will-Ruby-3-0-release

 They say it will be December 2020.


Oh no... I've completely misread the announce... (for my 
justification my native country celebrates Christmas at 7. 
January).

Well, at least we had rails 6 this year.
Dec 11 2019
prev sibling parent reply bachmeier <no spam.net> writes:
On Monday, 9 December 2019 at 14:45:54 UTC, Ola Fosheim Grøstad 
wrote:

 On Monday, 9 December 2019 at 14:12:39 UTC, bachmeier wrote:

 Ruby's far from dead, and a lot more than just Homebrew and 
 Jekyll. For obvious reasons, Basecamp uses it. Github and 
 Gitlab both use it. Sinatra is still very popular as is the


 Yes, Ruby is twice as large as Go (roughly) in terms of 
 projects that are being maintained, but much worse off than 
 Python:


Python's a juggernaut. There's no shame in failing to be as 
popular as Python. I don't particularly care for the language, 
but obviously a lot of people do or more likely don't care enough 
to use something else.

Where D comes in is with a good interoperability story for both 
Ruby and Python. If we succeed at that, which we unfortunately 
have not yet done, we benefit from their popularity.
Dec 09 2019
parent reply Ola Fosheim =?UTF-8?B?R3LDuHN0YWQ=?= <ola.fosheim.grostad gmail.com> writes:
On Monday, 9 December 2019 at 16:05:19 UTC, bachmeier wrote:

 Where D comes in is with a good interoperability story for both 
 Ruby and Python. If we succeed at that, which we unfortunately 
 have not yet done, we benefit from their popularity.


That could happen, my impression from the D community is that 
there is one group who are "library developers" and  another 
group that want to be "application developers".

Though, the best integration on the horizon is WebAssembly, which 
will allow you to write engines (libraries) for any language.

So Sebastiaan Koppe's work on WebAssembly might become 
significant. Language contenders with tight codegen, good 
debugging support (DWARF) and low memory usage could easily take 
off in the next 2-3 years.

Rust and AssemblyScript has a head start though...

Another integration path to watch out for is Dart. Who is now 
getting foreign function invocation so that means D could attach 
itself to Flutter (GUI for iOS, Android, Desktop and Web) and 
benefit from that ecosystem. I think arrays are still missing 
though.
Dec 09 2019
parent bachmeier <no spam.net> writes:
On Monday, 9 December 2019 at 16:33:27 UTC, Ola Fosheim Grøstad 
wrote:


 So Sebastiaan Koppe's work on WebAssembly might become 
 significant. Language contenders with tight codegen, good 
 debugging support (DWARF) and low memory usage could easily 
 take off in the next 2-3 years.


Yes, he's doing critically important work to make D available in 
more places. Not my area at all, but clearly a big target.


 Another integration path to watch out for is Dart. Who is now 
 getting foreign function invocation so that means D could 
 attach itself to Flutter (GUI for iOS, Android, Desktop and 
 Web) and benefit from that ecosystem. I think arrays are still 
 missing though.


I've looked into this, and dpp gives it to us for free, as far as 
I can tell. Friendly wrappers will improve the experience, but 
the big hurdle of bindings to the basic functionality is already 
solved.
Dec 09 2019
prev sibling parent Ola Fosheim =?UTF-8?B?R3LDuHN0YWQ=?= <ola.fosheim.grostad gmail.com> writes:
On Saturday, 7 December 2019 at 20:41:37 UTC, JN wrote:

 Dart's dramatic rise is interesting. I attribute it to Flutter, 
 but it's crazy how much up it went.


On this graph you can see the spikes for Flutter (announcements):

https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=today%205-y&q=golang,typescript,kotlin,flutter

Also plotted in other unique terms to show how fast Flutter is 
going up.
Dec 10 2019