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digitalmars.D - I love D

reply Vitaliy Fadeev <vital.fadeev gmail.com> writes:
Just know this.
Sep 18 2023
next sibling parent reply Vitaliy Fadeev <vital.fadeev gmail.com> writes:
On Tuesday, 19 September 2023 at 04:34:30 UTC, Vitaliy Fadeev 
wrote:

 ...


I like foreach.
I like templates.
I like ranges.

Just look at this SDL event pool implementation:

```d
         foreach( e; pool )
             process( e );
```

I love short text blocks, like this:

```d
// using pool
struct Game
{
     static
     Pool    pool;
     Sensors sensors;

     void go()
     {
         foreach( d; pool )
             sensors.sense( d );
     }
}
```

Nice:

```d
void main()
{
     game.go();	
}
```

I love structured types, like this:

```d
// event pool
import bindbc.sdl;
import types;


struct Pool
{
     D front;

     void popFront()
     {
         if ( SDL_WaitEvent( cast( SDL_Event* )&this.front ) == 0 )
             throw new SDLException( "Pool.popFront: " );
     }

     bool empty()
     {
         return ( front.type == SDL_QUIT );
     }

     void opOpAssign( string op : "~" )( SDL_EventType t )
     {
         SDL_Event event;
         event.type = t;
         SDL_PushEvent( &event ); // The event is copied into the 
queue.
     }
}

```
Sep 18 2023
next sibling parent cc <cc nevernet.com> writes:
On Tuesday, 19 September 2023 at 04:43:25 UTC, Vitaliy Fadeev 
wrote:

 I like foreach.


I especially like *static* foreach. 😎
Sep 24 2023
prev sibling parent Alexandru Ermicioi <alexandru.ermicioi gmail.com> writes:
On Tuesday, 19 September 2023 at 04:43:25 UTC, Vitaliy Fadeev 
wrote:

 On Tuesday, 19 September 2023 at 04:34:30 UTC, Vitaliy Fadeev 
 wrote:

 ...


 I like foreach.
 I like templates.
 I like ranges.


I like arrayyyys, especially after a bit of c/c++, and php/java. 
D is middle earth!
Oct 06 2023
prev sibling next sibling parent Salih Dincer <salihdb hotmail.com> writes:
On Tuesday, 19 September 2023 at 04:34:30 UTC, Vitaliy Fadeev 
wrote:

 Just know this.


+1 😍

SDB 79
Sep 18 2023
prev sibling next sibling parent reply "H. S. Teoh" <hsteoh qfbox.info> writes:
On Tue, Sep 19, 2023 at 04:34:30AM +0000, Vitaliy Fadeev via Digitalmars-d
wrote:

 Just know this.


Me too!

One of my favorite parts:

	// Slow
	auto myData = iota(1_000_000).array;
	foreach (data; myData) {
		doSomething(data);
	}

	// Instant speedup:
	auto myData = iota(1_000_000).array;
	foreach (data; myData.parallel) {
		doSomething(data);
	}

D r0x0rs!

No, D boulders! :-D


T

-- 
Старый друг лучше новых двух.
Sep 20 2023
parent Walter Bright <newshound2 digitalmars.com> writes:
On 9/20/2023 4:01 PM, H. S. Teoh wrote:

 D r0x0rs!
 
 No, D boulders! :-D


Love it!
Sep 20 2023
prev sibling next sibling parent reply matheus <matheus gmail.com> writes:
On Tuesday, 19 September 2023 at 04:34:30 UTC, Vitaliy Fadeev 
wrote:

 Just know this.


One thing that I like about D is... it has the performance of a 
System/compiled language at at same time supports GC.

I'm not a language expert but coming from C that was very cool.

Matheus.
Sep 20 2023
parent reply Imperatorn <johan_forsberg_86 hotmail.com> writes:
On Thursday, 21 September 2023 at 01:07:30 UTC, matheus wrote:

 On Tuesday, 19 September 2023 at 04:34:30 UTC, Vitaliy Fadeev 
 wrote:

 Just know this.


 One thing that I like about D is... it has the performance of a 
 System/compiled language at at same time supports GC.

 I'm not a language expert but coming from C that was very cool.

 Matheus.


Nice to see some praise to D for a change. We need more people 
like this
Sep 21 2023
next sibling parent bachmeier <no spam.net> writes:
On Thursday, 21 September 2023 at 16:29:43 UTC, Imperatorn wrote:


 Nice to see some praise to D for a change. We need more people 
 like this


Then you aren't talking to me. The internet culture (right or 
wrong) promotes criticism over praise.
Sep 21 2023
prev sibling parent reply Antonio <antoniocabreraperez gmail.com> writes:
On Thursday, 21 September 2023 at 16:29:43 UTC, Imperatorn wrote:

 On Thursday, 21 September 2023 at 01:07:30 UTC, matheus wrote:

 On Tuesday, 19 September 2023 at 04:34:30 UTC, Vitaliy Fadeev 
 wrote:

 Just know this.


 One thing that I like about D is... it has the performance of 
 a System/compiled language at at same time supports GC.

 I'm not a language expert but coming from C that was very cool.

 Matheus.


 Nice to see some praise to D for a change. We need more people 
 like this


I love GC too.  Too many discussions trying to kill GC.
Sep 24 2023
next sibling parent Imperatorn <johan_forsberg_86 hotmail.com> writes:
On Sunday, 24 September 2023 at 22:33:56 UTC, Antonio wrote:

 On Thursday, 21 September 2023 at 16:29:43 UTC, Imperatorn 
 wrote:

 On Thursday, 21 September 2023 at 01:07:30 UTC, matheus wrote:

 On Tuesday, 19 September 2023 at 04:34:30 UTC, Vitaliy Fadeev 
 wrote:

 Just know this.


 One thing that I like about D is... it has the performance of 
 a System/compiled language at at same time supports GC.

 I'm not a language expert but coming from C that was very 
 cool.

 Matheus.


 Nice to see some praise to D for a change. We need more people 
 like this


 I love GC too.  Too many discussions trying to kill GC.


True, that's what makes D a bit unique in this field. And it's 
plasticity.
Sep 24 2023
prev sibling parent "H. S. Teoh" <hsteoh qfbox.info> writes:
On Sun, Sep 24, 2023 at 10:33:56PM +0000, Antonio via Digitalmars-d wrote:

 On Thursday, 21 September 2023 at 16:29:43 UTC, Imperatorn wrote:

 On Thursday, 21 September 2023 at 01:07:30 UTC, matheus wrote:

 On Tuesday, 19 September 2023 at 04:34:30 UTC, Vitaliy Fadeev wrote:

 Just know this.


 
 One thing that I like about D is... it has the performance of a
 System/compiled language at at same time supports GC.
 
 I'm not a language expert but coming from C that was very cool.






[...]

 Nice to see some praise to D for a change. We need more people like this


 
 I love GC too.  Too many discussions trying to kill GC.


+1.

The GC is a real boon for not spending countless hours debugging memory
leaks and pointer bugs. And for facilitating clean, understandable,
composable internal APIs that aren't cluttered with memory management
paraphrenalia spam.  And for freeing up your mental resources to focus
on actually making progress in the problem domain, rather than
constantly wrangling with memory management issues.


--T
Sep 25 2023
prev sibling next sibling parent IchorDev <zxinsworld gmail.com> writes:
On Tuesday, 19 September 2023 at 04:34:30 UTC, Vitaliy Fadeev 
wrote:

 Just know this.


One thing I really love, personally, is how expressive you can 
get with APIs in D.
In C I expect stuff like this:
```c
/*
  bla bla ... is deprecated and should not be used ... bla bla
*/
void run(const Data* val, unsigned char* msg, const void* usr);
```

Whereas, in D I can write:
```d
deprecated("should not be used ... bla bla")
noreturn run(U)(scope const(Data)* val, string msg, in U usr) 
nothrow pure;
```
(without `-preview=in`: swap `in` for `auto ref const`)

The specificity that D offers, particularly with `pure`, and 
`scope`, and `scope`'s derivatives, becomes really useful when 
you have to declare a public API with interfaces & classes. You 
can make sure that when you call something inheriting from a 
public interface that the call won't have side-effects, or that 
the foreign function won't store a pointer passed to it (that it 
doesn't own) anywhere.
Sep 21 2023
prev sibling parent reply Imperatorn <johan_forsberg_86 hotmail.com> writes:
On Tuesday, 19 September 2023 at 04:34:30 UTC, Vitaliy Fadeev 
wrote:

 Just know this.


I wonder why D isn't more popular.

Also we have arsd, so it's an automatic win.
Sep 24 2023
parent reply evilrat <evilrat666 gmail.com> writes:
On Sunday, 24 September 2023 at 07:27:39 UTC, Imperatorn wrote:

 I wonder why D isn't more popular.

 Also we have arsd, so it's an automatic win.


I think major points is:

1) most devs are web related - this means that even when using 
existing solutions there is demand on single-file binary 
distributions that can be deployed on target node(infrastructure 
management, clouds, etc...) without hassle, sure it is doable in 
D but people are lazy so they just choose Go and won't bother, 
esp. with such poor IDE's and debugging experience in D.

2) Since this unity fiasco last week I see many unity developers 

can they drop everything they made in godot without doing extra 
work, and some even demand to drop built-in scripting language 

I can't objectively say anything neutral so no comments, but this 
situation shows the mentality as well.

(I must to say though there are wide gap between their skills, 
and truly experienced devs already showing some cool stuff made 
with godot on a level that I haven't seen before.)

3) Fresh programmers are looking at tooling first, more 
specifically jetbrains level IDE for the language they are going 
to use(or just invest their time to), this whole story when 
reading tons of reddit comments(and tech related QA boards) 
becoming very frustrating as people won't even consider using 
anything other than rust, go, or the very least C++, of course 
for that enterprise development there is basically only two 

There is also demand on readily available components/scripts/code 
assets from non-tech people who just wants to make something and 
don't want getting their feet wet from dealing with all this 
"tech stuff".

So basically these 3 points are all intertangled, in short:
D isn't yet mature enough, it is not yet polished enough for wide 
masses, the convinience and tooling "just sucks"(tm).
Sep 24 2023
next sibling parent evilrat <evilrat666 gmail.com> writes:
On Sunday, 24 September 2023 at 09:16:27 UTC, evilrat wrote:

 On Sunday, 24 September 2023 at 07:27:39 UTC, Imperatorn wrote:

 I wonder why D isn't more popular.

 Also we have arsd, so it's an automatic win.


 I think major points is:
 ...


Oh and also probably the most important

4) Publicity and visibility (aka PR and advertisement): D is 
basically invisible, I rarely see any mentions of it in 
discussions, there is no advertisement, nobody talks about it.
Don't get me wrong, we all hate ads and especially aggressive 
marketing, but without any publicity the thing is basically 
doesn't exists.

Let's look at this situation - some big company that we all know 
about (for example that one softdrinks company with red logo), 
when they start a new flavor they put tons of money in 
advertisement, you will see it everywhere and it stays for 
months, literally it speaks from every toaster.
No matter how skeptical and defensive you are you will end up 
buying that thing at least once, because you know, everyone talks 
about it, your mom talks about it, your coworkers talk about it, 
kids going to school talks about it, it can't be that bad right?
So after quite some time you give up and do try it yourself to 
make a final decision if this is a BS or at least half-decent 
product. That's it.
I can't not to cite it but here we have a saying like that 
"Millions of flies can't be wrong", if everyone talks about it 
(rust for example, no offense meant) it must be at least somewhat 
good, right?
Sep 24 2023
prev sibling next sibling parent reply "Richard (Rikki) Andrew Cattermole" <richard cattermole.co.nz> writes:
On 24/09/2023 10:16 PM, evilrat wrote:

 So basically these 3 points are all intertangled, in short: D isn't yet 
 mature enough, it is not yet polished enough for wide masses, the 
 convinience and tooling "just sucks"(tm).


We don't even have a working debugger on Windows anymore.

Thanks Microsoft.
Sep 24 2023
next sibling parent reply Imperatorn <johan_forsberg_86 hotmail.com> writes:
On Sunday, 24 September 2023 at 09:38:10 UTC, Richard (Rikki) 
Andrew Cattermole wrote:

 On 24/09/2023 10:16 PM, evilrat wrote:

 So basically these 3 points are all intertangled, in short: D 
 isn't yet mature enough, it is not yet polished enough for 
 wide masses, the convinience and tooling "just sucks"(tm).


 We don't even have a working debugger on Windows anymore.

 Thanks Microsoft.


Why not? They broke WinDbg? What have I missed
Sep 24 2023
parent reply "Richard (Rikki) Andrew Cattermole" <richard cattermole.co.nz> writes:
On 24/09/2023 11:09 PM, Imperatorn wrote:

 On Sunday, 24 September 2023 at 09:38:10 UTC, Richard (Rikki) Andrew 
 Cattermole wrote:

 On 24/09/2023 10:16 PM, evilrat wrote:

 So basically these 3 points are all intertangled, in short: D isn't 
 yet mature enough, it is not yet polished enough for wide masses, the 
 convinience and tooling "just sucks"(tm).


 We don't even have a working debugger on Windows anymore.

 Thanks Microsoft.


 
 Why not? They broke WinDbg? What have I missed


WinDbg has never been a good experience with D or at least for me that is.

No, they broke VS debugger (which gets used with vs-code too).

Can't show locals anymore.
Sep 24 2023
next sibling parent Imperatorn <johan_forsberg_86 hotmail.com> writes:
On Sunday, 24 September 2023 at 10:28:53 UTC, Richard (Rikki) 
Andrew Cattermole wrote:

 On 24/09/2023 11:09 PM, Imperatorn wrote:

 On Sunday, 24 September 2023 at 09:38:10 UTC, Richard (Rikki) 
 Andrew Cattermole wrote:

 On 24/09/2023 10:16 PM, evilrat wrote:

 So basically these 3 points are all intertangled, in short: 
 D isn't yet mature enough, it is not yet polished enough for 
 wide masses, the convinience and tooling "just sucks"(tm).


 We don't even have a working debugger on Windows anymore.

 Thanks Microsoft.


 
 Why not? They broke WinDbg? What have I missed


 WinDbg has never been a good experience with D or at least for 
 me that is.

 No, they broke VS debugger (which gets used with vs-code too).

 Can't show locals anymore.


Oh, that's unfortunate. Some breaking change they did? Can we 
adapt?
Sep 24 2023
prev sibling next sibling parent reply cc <cc nevernet.com> writes:
On Sunday, 24 September 2023 at 10:28:53 UTC, Richard (Rikki) 
Andrew Cattermole wrote:

 WinDbg has never been a good experience with D or at least for 
 me that is.

 No, they broke VS debugger (which gets used with vs-code too).

 Can't show locals anymore.


Would be nice if there were a simple, just-works out of the box D 
debugger on Windows, particularly for the non-VS crowd.
Sep 24 2023
parent "Richard (Rikki) Andrew Cattermole" <richard cattermole.co.nz> writes:
On 25/09/2023 12:43 AM, cc wrote:

 Would be nice if there were a simple, just-works out of the box D 
 debugger on Windows, particularly for the non-VS crowd.


The VS debugger engine is available separately, however I think x64dbg 
could be a good candidate as it is OSS.

Its missing locals & demangling, but because its OSS, it might be 
possible to fix both VS and x64dbg for locals in one go if we can get it 
working.
Sep 24 2023
prev sibling next sibling parent reply Guillaume Piolat <first.name gmail.com> writes:
On Sunday, 24 September 2023 at 10:28:53 UTC, Richard (Rikki) 
Andrew Cattermole wrote:

 WinDbg has never been a good experience with D or at least for 
 me that is.

 No, they broke VS debugger (which gets used with vs-code too).

 Can't show locals anymore.


I used WinDbg last week and I was surprised it has received a 
major update in usability from Miscrosoft. I was able to find a 
bug where Visual Studio wouldn't let me debug optimized code. 
WinDbg did when I pointed it the PDB, with an executable built 
outside of VisualD. It is now as simple to use as say, AMD uProf, 
and you can debug 32-bit and 64-bit indifferently.
Sep 24 2023
parent Imperatorn <johan_forsberg_86 hotmail.com> writes:
On Sunday, 24 September 2023 at 13:03:20 UTC, Guillaume Piolat 
wrote:

 On Sunday, 24 September 2023 at 10:28:53 UTC, Richard (Rikki) 
 Andrew Cattermole wrote:

 WinDbg has never been a good experience with D or at least for 
 me that is.

 No, they broke VS debugger (which gets used with vs-code too).

 Can't show locals anymore.


 I used WinDbg last week and I was surprised it has received a 
 major update in usability from Miscrosoft. I was able to find a 
 bug where Visual Studio wouldn't let me debug optimized code. 
 WinDbg did when I pointed it the PDB, with an executable built 
 outside of VisualD. It is now as simple to use as say, AMD 
 uProf, and you can debug 32-bit and 64-bit indifferently.


Are you using the preview or normal one?
Sep 24 2023
prev sibling parent reply claptrap <clap trap.com> writes:
On Sunday, 24 September 2023 at 10:28:53 UTC, Richard (Rikki) 
Andrew Cattermole wrote:

 On 24/09/2023 11:09 PM, Imperatorn wrote:

 On Sunday, 24 September 2023 at 09:38:10 UTC, Richard (Rikki) 
 Andrew Cattermole wrote:

 On 24/09/2023 10:16 PM, evilrat wrote:

 So basically these 3 points are all intertangled, in short: 
 D isn't yet mature enough, it is not yet polished enough for 
 wide masses, the convinience and tooling "just sucks"(tm).


 We don't even have a working debugger on Windows anymore.

 Thanks Microsoft.


 
 Why not? They broke WinDbg? What have I missed


 WinDbg has never been a good experience with D or at least for 
 me that is.

 No, they broke VS debugger (which gets used with vs-code too).

 Can't show locals anymore.


Do you mean it just doesn't work in VSCode anymore? I mean you 
can still just debug the exe with visual studio?
Sep 24 2023
parent reply "Richard (Rikki) Andrew Cattermole" <richard cattermole.co.nz> writes:
On 25/09/2023 9:47 AM, claptrap wrote:

 Do you mean it just doesn't work in VSCode anymore? I mean you can still 
 just debug the exe with visual studio?


Same engine for both VS and VS-code (may depend upon the VS-code plugin 
tho).

You can debug, but you lack locals. So very limited usability atm.
Sep 24 2023
parent evilrat <evilrat666 gmail.com> writes:
On Sunday, 24 September 2023 at 21:24:14 UTC, Richard (Rikki) 
Andrew Cattermole wrote:

 On 25/09/2023 9:47 AM, claptrap wrote:

 Do you mean it just doesn't work in VSCode anymore? I mean you 
 can still just debug the exe with visual studio?


 Same engine for both VS and VS-code (may depend upon the 
 VS-code plugin tho).

 You can debug, but you lack locals. So very limited usability 
 atm.


In my case VSCode still works like before, but Visual Studio 17.7 
locals panel got stuck with "Busy..." label when entering D 
function in call stack, and the whole IDE becomes sluggish.
Though it could be yet another conflict with VisualD and 
ReSharper, previously I had to disable VisualD because it just 
hanged up from time to time.
Sep 24 2023
prev sibling parent reply ryuukk_ <ryuukk.dev gmail.com> writes:
On Sunday, 24 September 2023 at 09:38:10 UTC, Richard (Rikki) 
Andrew Cattermole wrote:

 On 24/09/2023 10:16 PM, evilrat wrote:

 So basically these 3 points are all intertangled, in short: D 
 isn't yet mature enough, it is not yet polished enough for 
 wide masses, the convinience and tooling "just sucks"(tm).


 We don't even have a working debugger on Windows anymore.

 Thanks Microsoft.


On windows i switched to remedybg, it's not free, but it works 
great and it's a just a 5mb executable

https://i.imgur.com/pdKX71z.png
Sep 24 2023
next sibling parent Imperatorn <johan_forsberg_86 hotmail.com> writes:
On Sunday, 24 September 2023 at 16:01:20 UTC, ryuukk_ wrote:

 On Sunday, 24 September 2023 at 09:38:10 UTC, Richard (Rikki) 
 Andrew Cattermole wrote:

 On 24/09/2023 10:16 PM, evilrat wrote:

 So basically these 3 points are all intertangled, in short: D 
 isn't yet mature enough, it is not yet polished enough for 
 wide masses, the convinience and tooling "just sucks"(tm).


 We don't even have a working debugger on Windows anymore.

 Thanks Microsoft.


 On windows i switched to remedybg, it's not free, but it works 
 great and it's a just a 5mb executable

 https://i.imgur.com/pdKX71z.png


Looks nice!
Sep 24 2023
prev sibling next sibling parent Imperatorn <johan_forsberg_86 hotmail.com> writes:
On Sunday, 24 September 2023 at 16:01:20 UTC, ryuukk_ wrote:

 On Sunday, 24 September 2023 at 09:38:10 UTC, Richard (Rikki) 
 Andrew Cattermole wrote:

 On 24/09/2023 10:16 PM, evilrat wrote:

 So basically these 3 points are all intertangled, in short: D 
 isn't yet mature enough, it is not yet polished enough for 
 wide masses, the convinience and tooling "just sucks"(tm).


 We don't even have a working debugger on Windows anymore.

 Thanks Microsoft.


 On windows i switched to remedybg, it's not free, but it works 
 great and it's a just a 5mb executable

 https://i.imgur.com/pdKX71z.png


Thanks for the tip, I bought it.
Sep 24 2023
prev sibling parent Imperatorn <johan_forsberg_86 hotmail.com> writes:
On Sunday, 24 September 2023 at 16:01:20 UTC, ryuukk_ wrote:

 On Sunday, 24 September 2023 at 09:38:10 UTC, Richard (Rikki) 
 Andrew Cattermole wrote:

 On 24/09/2023 10:16 PM, evilrat wrote:

 So basically these 3 points are all intertangled, in short: D 
 isn't yet mature enough, it is not yet polished enough for 
 wide masses, the convinience and tooling "just sucks"(tm).


 We don't even have a working debugger on Windows anymore.

 Thanks Microsoft.


 On windows i switched to remedybg, it's not free, but it works 
 great and it's a just a 5mb executable

 https://i.imgur.com/pdKX71z.png


I contacted the developer. He said support for D is on the 
roadmap when it comes to evaluating stuff from the stdlib.
Sep 26 2023
prev sibling next sibling parent Imperatorn <johan_forsberg_86 hotmail.com> writes:
On Sunday, 24 September 2023 at 09:16:27 UTC, evilrat wrote:

 On Sunday, 24 September 2023 at 07:27:39 UTC, Imperatorn wrote:

 I wonder why D isn't more popular.

 Also we have arsd, so it's an automatic win.


 I think major points is:

 1) most devs are web related - this means that even when using 
 existing solutions there is demand on single-file binary 
 distributions that can be deployed on target 
 node(infrastructure management, clouds, etc...) without hassle, 
 sure it is doable in D but people are lazy so they just choose 
 Go and won't bother, esp. with such poor IDE's and debugging 
 experience in D.

 2) Since this unity fiasco last week I see many unity 

 or that, how can they drop everything they made in godot 
 without doing extra work, and some even demand to drop built-in 

 I can't objectively say anything neutral so no comments, but 
 this situation shows the mentality as well.

 (I must to say though there are wide gap between their skills, 
 and truly experienced devs already showing some cool stuff made 
 with godot on a level that I haven't seen before.)

 3) Fresh programmers are looking at tooling first, more 
 specifically jetbrains level IDE for the language they are 
 going to use(or just invest their time to), this whole story 
 when reading tons of reddit comments(and tech related QA 
 boards) becoming very frustrating as people won't even consider 
 using anything other than rust, go, or the very least C++, of 
 course for that enterprise development there is basically only 

 There is also demand on readily available 
 components/scripts/code assets from non-tech people who just 
 wants to make something and don't want getting their feet wet 
 from dealing with all this "tech stuff".

 So basically these 3 points are all intertangled, in short:
 D isn't yet mature enough, it is not yet polished enough for 
 wide masses, the convinience and tooling "just sucks"(tm).


Web api can be made super easy with arsd.cgi. And I would say 

and speed.

However, what D lacks is tooling. For example, let's say I want 
to persist data somewhere.


super easy. Both model first (I usually do this initially) or 
code first.

And if I want to change from MySQL to SQL or Postgres or 
whatever, I can count on that there will be a package for that 
and that it will take 5 minutes max to change, most of the time 
it's just to change config.

In D, I don't know what the status is. My feeling is that it's 
"almost there".

The language is mature enough, that's not the problem. It's the 
surrounding tooling and infrastructure.

For example, when develop, I expect things to "just work", like 
debugging without even having to configure anything, symbol 
lookup on hover, code completion without hassle, refactoring 
capabilites, easy profiling, remote debugging, dependency 
incjection etc etc.

I'm just writing some things from the top of my head. But I think 
you get the point.

In summary, D as a language is mature. D as a complete developer 
experience is not yet mature enough, but I hope it will be soon, 
because D 100% has a place in the modern world.
Sep 24 2023
prev sibling parent reply bachmeier <no spam.net> writes:
On Sunday, 24 September 2023 at 09:16:27 UTC, evilrat wrote:

 On Sunday, 24 September 2023 at 07:27:39 UTC, Imperatorn wrote:

 I wonder why D isn't more popular.

 Also we have arsd, so it's an automatic win.


 I think major points is:

 1) most devs are web related


I don't think this is meaningful. Almost certainly more than 50% 
of people who call themselves programmers are working on things 
related to the web. That doesn't mean there aren't a lot of 
programmers working on other things like data science.

Web programming is almost certainly a dead end today. That space 
is full. That just means D's opportunities are elsewhere.
Sep 25 2023
parent reply Antonio <antoniocabreraperez gmail.com> writes:
On Monday, 25 September 2023 at 17:51:05 UTC, bachmeier wrote:

 On Sunday, 24 September 2023 at 09:16:27 UTC, evilrat wrote:

 On Sunday, 24 September 2023 at 07:27:39 UTC, Imperatorn wrote:

 I wonder why D isn't more popular.

 Also we have arsd, so it's an automatic win.


 I think major points is:

 1) most devs are web related


 I don't think this is meaningful. Almost certainly more than 
 50% of people who call themselves programmers are working on 
 things related to the web. That doesn't mean there aren't a lot 
 of programmers working on other things like data science.

 Web programming is almost certainly a dead end today. That 
 space is full. That just means D's opportunities are elsewhere.


Creating a manufacturing line emulation with OPCUA interface....

Of course, management and visualization implemented in web.

Don't close de door: every door opens a wide range of 
opportunities.
Sep 25 2023
next sibling parent Bruce Carneal <bcarneal gmail.com> writes:
On Tuesday, 26 September 2023 at 01:28:54 UTC, Antonio wrote:

 On Monday, 25 September 2023 at 17:51:05 UTC, bachmeier wrote:

 On Sunday, 24 September 2023 at 09:16:27 UTC, evilrat wrote:

 On Sunday, 24 September 2023 at 07:27:39 UTC, Imperatorn 
 wrote:

 I wonder why D isn't more popular.

 Also we have arsd, so it's an automatic win.


 I think major points is:

 1) most devs are web related


 I don't think this is meaningful
 ...
 Web programming is almost certainly a dead end today. That 
 space is full. That just means D's opportunities are elsewhere.


 Creating a manufacturing line emulation with OPCUA interface....

 Of course, management and visualization implemented in web.

 Don't close de door: every door opens a wide range of 
 opportunities.


Indeed.  Also note that many improvements to D and its ecosystem 
that could benefit Web programmers: faster simpler multi-core 
event handling, great strength to weight ratio database 
frameworks, better I/O abstractions generally, ... are 
foundational rather than Web specific.
Sep 25 2023
prev sibling parent reply bachmeier <no spam.net> writes:
On Tuesday, 26 September 2023 at 01:28:54 UTC, Antonio wrote:


 Creating a manufacturing line emulation with OPCUA interface....

 Of course, management and visualization implemented in web.

 Don't close de door: every door opens a wide range of 
 opportunities.


It's worth it if someone wants to do the work. I doubt that 
there's any realistic scenario where D will ever be a big player 
in web development. (Which is different from saying D will never 
be a good choice for web development. From the bit of web 
development I've seen, the standards are low.)
Sep 26 2023
parent reply harakim <harakim gmail.com> writes:
On Tuesday, 26 September 2023 at 15:55:36 UTC, bachmeier wrote:

 I doubt that there's any realistic scenario where D will ever 
 be a big player in web development.



development. I think D would be good at web development, but not 
something to drop dotnet over.

I feel like D is really good at writing solid business logic that 
is predictable about how it will behave and perform. I don't need 
500 frameworks to write usable code in D and I can use language 
features to tighten it up and reduce chances for mistakes. And 
the performance is good and you can reason about it. Also, I can 
do pretty much anything I want in it.


school or job and that's not going to favor D any time soon. 
However, basically everyone goes and explores other languages. 
Think about when you explored a language. Why did you do it?

In my experience, it usually boils down to having a specific 
project, finding a language that has that niche and doing the 
project. Once you do that, if the experience was decent, you give 
it another chance. Maybe you keep working on that original 
program. If it goes well, you naturally reach out for that 
language again for a future project. (I understand people try new 
languages, but unless they get a job, I rarely see them stick 
with it.)

For example, I set out to write a game (niche). I looked at game 
engines and languages. No engines really supported the game I was 
making. I really liked C and Java but I had problems with both. 
So I stumbled on D. I had a good experience and I have come back 
ever since. I wrote the game again in D2. It was a great choice. 
I bought Andrei Alexandrescu's book and it was like a revelation. 
C-syntax with garbage collection and classes is good enough. The 
threading model, the direct memory access through pointers, 
bindings to C libraries and good performance really made me feel 
proud of what I had created. So since then, I've been committed.

When I was running, my running partner collected data on his 
watch. He would dump the times, locations and elevations to me 
and I used excel to process it. I would calculate our best mile, 
our best 200m, how much hills affected our run and everything. It 
was slow, but it didn't need to be fast. The first version 
probably took me an hour and had most of what we wanted. As a 
result of the success, I always turn to excel or google sheets 
first for stuff like that now.

I think D is barely lacking, but is lacking in every part of this 
process. People have come to D over the years. I think a lot of 
that is because if there a problem is no other language has 
focused on, D is by default a good choice because it is at least 
*good* at everything. In that sense, D has had good niches. In 
fact, D is one of the most common uncommon languages among older 
programmers. I was talking to someone at my work about the future 
of programming and mentioned D and I was right, he had used it 
before. So why is there a problem with niches? Because other 
languages and libraries for those languages have come a long way. 
And D hasn't kept up.

There is no start to finish niche (for me) that D is good at. If 
I want to crunch numbers, I turn to excel. If I want to make a 
UI, I necessarily turn to Javascript/html and a self-loathing or 
else .NET and XAML. If I want to make a web backend, I can use 
dotnet or many people would use Java Spring or node.js. I mean, I 
can write a webserver in express.js in 20 minutes. As far as I 
can tell, there isn't a real good game engine solution in D yet 
(I haven't checked in a few years.) Now, if I just need a command 
line program, you better believe I'm writing it in D. Mostly the 
same for a TCP server. So, in my estimation, D doesn't have that 
start to finish experience that makes it strong in some niche.

I want to emphasize that D is great for writing from scratch, so 
in my opinion for any new niche that emerges it's automatically a 
top player and that is a huge strength that keeps bringing people 
in.

Once they get here, they might not have that smooth, successful 
experience. T

They might be scared off by the lack of tooling. Most newer 
developers are used to tik tok, youtube and sub-20 minute 
tutorials. They are not used to learning a command line and 
having to actually learn language syntax from the get-go without 
IDE help. They are not used to having to look up documentation on 
libraries. The IDE just tells them with intellisense or module 
suggestion. Older developers are probably more open to lesser 
tooling in exchange for a better language.


The library situation might leave a bad taste in their mouth. The 
standard library surprises me often with the functions it does 
have. However, it can be a bit hard to find them. If I were new, 
I would never think to look for string functions in 
std.algorithm. Also, some functions exist but are named 
differently than in every other language. I feel like that's 
fine, but it makes them hard to find.  The documentation for the 
standard library has gotten much better since years ago, but it 
sometimes misses an essential example. Now that I understand the 
method signatures, this is not an issue, but it has been a big 
one in the past. When you don't understand the standard types or 
temples, the syntax of a simple function in the standard library 
can be difficult. I have thought about writing a book giving a 
tour of the standard library but my personal life does not allow 
for the time commitment I would need.

Then there is the lack of third party libraries. Even if you find 
one, it might not compile anymore or the tutorial you are using 
might be so out of date it doesn't work anymore. That even goes 
for libraries that are just bindings.

Andrei's book was essential for me to be successful with my D2 
game. It did a good job making sense of the language features. 
Until I had that, I didn't even know why I wasn't allowed to cast 
an immutable to not immutable and vice versa. I understand in 
theory why it could be bad and appreciate it, but I didn't 
understand D was enforcing that. There were probably 10 or 20 of 
these gotchas that all piled onto each other and made reasoning 
difficult. The compiler errors are often no help. If it weren't 
for the book, I would have been lost.

Then there are things that need to be cleaned up and that is 
vying with not breaking existing code. I think that balance, or 
strategy rather, will be the key for D's success in the years 
ahead.

I think D is in a unique place being good at everything and not 
having a lot of dependencies. I think the industry is reaching a 
turning point where people will say enough is enough with all the 
frameworks. Then there are the tools that hang while they index 
or do intellisense. And, frankly, Java, Javascript and even 
Python are using so many third party libraries and frameworks 
these days that when something goes wrong, it is often the case 
that no one at a smaller company will be able to figure it out. 
Performance issues are taking up more time and money. And then 
there are the litany of security issues that arise from the 
interactions of hundreds of libraries. I don't think it's a 
sustainable path and a few co-workers have mentioned this to me 
as well.

Just as kind of an aside, but you can already see bugs affecting 
a lot of life. There were some examples in the 2019 Dconf 
presentation "All Spreadsheets Must Die". I was talking with one 
of the people at my new job and they complained about the state 
of software. I told them I knew all about that. They said I had 
normalized it and I didn't realize. So I wrote them all down. I 
wrote dozens of things that week with at least one major issue a 
day from a XSS vulnerability at my credit card website and a 
financial website being unavailable to my plane decompressing! 
(To be sure, that might have been hardware.)

I do web development for a living, but I still cringe every time 
I have to do front end work. Right now, I'm off and on trying to 
make D work as a front end language. Failing that, whatever 
language ends up being good for desktop UI development is going 
to draw me in with that niche. I'll still use D, but that 
language is going to earn a place at my table even if it's 
horrible at most everything else.

I love D. I love the built in threads and messaging. I love the 
succinctness of associative arrays and lists. I sometimes love 
immutability. I like templates. I love that there is a GC option. 
There is so much more that I like and more that I just take for 
granted.

I think a lot of other people would if they gave it a chance and 
I think I outlined the reasons. Like I said, D is at least good 
in basically every way. The issues I mentioned are not difficult, 
they just take work. I don't think any of these issues are as 
large as those facing other languages like C++ and Java. As for 
me, I hope I get time to contribute more to the D community and 
I'm happy with the direction it's going.
Oct 05 2023
parent Imperatorn <johan_forsberg_86 hotmail.com> writes:
On Thursday, 5 October 2023 at 21:46:05 UTC, harakim wrote:

 On Tuesday, 26 September 2023 at 15:55:36 UTC, bachmeier wrote:

 [...]



 development. I think D would be good at web development, but 
 not something to drop dotnet over.

 [...]


Well said!
Oct 06 2023