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digitalmars.D - Top 3 use cases for D

reply Imperatorn <johan_forsberg_86 hotmail.com> writes:
In your opinion, what is the selling point of D, the top 3 use 
cases where D would be a nice fit?

D has struggled to find a niche (because it's so flexible?), but 
is that also why it hasn't seen wider adoption?

What do you think are the top 3 places where you think "I could 
use D here instead of {language} because {reasons}"?
Sep 27
next sibling parent reply "H. S. Teoh" <hsteoh qfbox.info> writes:
On Fri, Sep 27, 2024 at 06:49:27PM +0000, Imperatorn via Digitalmars-d wrote:

 In your opinion, what is the selling point of D, the top 3 use cases
 where D would be a nice fit?


The top selling point of D for me is that it's easy to write working
code in D.  My typical development times are much shorter in D compared
with equivalent code in C/C++/Java.  D also has very nice built-in
features, like unittests, which in spite of whatever warts they may have
make it easy to develop correct, working code.  In C/C++ I'd have to
spend inordinate amounts of time debugging the code after writing it,
and in other languages I'd have to resort to external test frameworks,
which add to the inertia of being too lazy to actually do it.

My current actual (not hypothetical!) use cases for D are:

- A handy shell-script replacement that has none of the shell's
  irritating points (like greedy string interpolation, that leads to
  needless fragility and Leaning Toothpick Syndrome, plus I can get
  parallization almost for free with almost no effort).

- Quick prototyping of programs that do complex computations -- because
  D has so many boilerplate-reducing features that makes it possible to
  try out new ideas quickly without drowning in boilerplate (like Java
  is wont to do).  Many of these prototypes can be easily turned into
  real applications relatively painlessly -- because D is just so
  flexible that refactoring is almost always a breeze. Built-in
  unittests ensure refactorings don't introduce too many breakages in
  the transition.

- Workhorse programs that I use repeatedly: because D's features make
  maintenance relatively easy, and adding new features often doesn't
  require major refactorings like the equivalent C/C++ projects often
  require IME.



 D has struggled to find a niche (because it's so flexible?), but is
 that also why it hasn't seen wider adoption?


I'd say the small- to medium-sized application zone is where D excels
the most at.  For larger applications I can't really say, haven't had
too much experience in that area, but based on what I know, in a larger
application that may depend on external libraries, finding said
libraries may be a problem.  I generally have to resort to writing my
own wrappers for C APIs to call external libraries with.  It's workable,
but maintenance is a bit of a pain when the external APIs change.



 What do you think are the top 3 places where you think "I could use D
 here instead of {language} because {reasons}"?


I'm already using D instead of shell scripts, because D is just so much
better at dealing with data manipulations than hacking the equivalent
functionality with sed, awk, grep, and expr.

I'm also using D instead of Perl scripts these days, because Perl is
just not very maintainable once you get past a certain level of
complexity (which is not very high).

And I'm definitely using D instead of C/C++ in my personal projects,
because it just takes far too much effort to implement things in C/C++
and afterwards it takes far too much effort to debug.  In spite of its
warts, D does much better in this area IME than C/C++.

//

Having said that, though, I'm still hesitant to introduce my
C/C++-minded colleagues to D, because their first reaction would be
GC-phobia, and their second reaction would be "who uses this unknown
language?", and their third reaction would be "are you sure we want
company products to depend on such a small unknown team?".  I've no
interest in participating in this fashion show, so I'm not even going to
bother.

On the more technical side, things like shared, which "does what it's
designed to do" but nevertheless obviously screams "incomplete solution"
to an outsider, or dip1000 that nobody can explain in 2 sentences before
would-be adopters glaze over in their eyes, or the absence of read/write
barriers that would have given us a modern, generational GC instead of
the conservative compromise we have today -- these just don't look good
to a newcomer.  And the attribute soup looks scarier and scarier every
time we attempt to fix it.  Plus a ton of peripheral half-baked features
that were never completed, or were completed but don't present a
comprehensive solution, I honestly wouldn't know how to answer if
someone asked me "why has feature X been like this for Y many years, and
what are you guys doing about it?".


T

-- 
People who are more than casually interested in computers should have at least
some idea of what the underlying hardware is like. Otherwise the programs they
write will be pretty weird. -- D. Knuth
Sep 27
parent andy <andy example.org> writes:
On Friday, 27 September 2024 at 19:15:36 UTC, H. S. Teoh wrote:

 Quick prototyping of programs


The runnable unit-tests in the docs make exploration of the 
stdlib very fast. This is almost ten percent as good as a REPL, 
which is much better than what most compiled languages offer.


 I'd say the small- to medium-sized application zone is where D 
 excels the most at.


It definitely has some competitive advantages that are most 
apparent in this zone.
Some small nits that would help here:
Integrated unittests already help a lot, but I wish one of the 
popular unittest frameworks were included in the stdlib to make 
it zero-friction.
Tuples and sumtypes are important QoL features that are missing 
for me that would reduce boilerplate and increase expressiveness 
for the straightforward data-transformation programs.
Sep 29
prev sibling next sibling parent Lance Bachmeier <no spam.net> writes:
On Friday, 27 September 2024 at 18:49:27 UTC, Imperatorn wrote:

 In your opinion, what is the selling point of D, the top 3 use 
 cases where D would be a nice fit?


Who are you selling to? That question only makes sense in the 
context of a specific application.


 D has struggled to find a niche (because it's so flexible?), 
 but is that also why it hasn't seen wider adoption?


Those are two different things. D has at least one wildly 
successful niche in interacting with C code. That is unlikely to 
result in wide adoption because that requires replacing Java, 
C++, Python, etc. Working well with C is nice but not helpful in 
getting on the front page of Hacker News because of some startup 
that's using it.


 What do you think are the top 3 places where you think "I could 
 use D here instead of {language} because {reasons}"?


Scripting and data analysis are two. Those are often done with 
one or a small number of programmers.
Sep 27
prev sibling next sibling parent Serg Gini <kornburn yandex.ru> writes:
On Friday, 27 September 2024 at 18:49:27 UTC, Imperatorn wrote:

 In your opinion, what is the selling point of D, the top 3 use 
 cases where D would be a nice fit?

 D has struggled to find a niche (because it's so flexible?), 
 but is that also why it hasn't seen wider adoption?

 What do you think are the top 3 places where you think "I could 
 use D here instead of {language} because {reasons}"?


Hobby projects
Testing ideas for compiler
Testing ideas for meta programming
Sep 27
prev sibling next sibling parent Bastiaan Veelo <Bastiaan Veelo.net> writes:
On Friday, 27 September 2024 at 18:49:27 UTC, Imperatorn wrote:

 In your opinion, what is the selling point of D, the top 3 use 
 cases where D would be a nice fit?

 D has struggled to find a niche (because it's so flexible?), 
 but is that also why it hasn't seen wider adoption?


I think not having a niche is a reason why it hasn't seen wider 
adoption. Also, not having a niche is what makes D attractive to 
us; Plus its many strong points. The top three use cases for us 
are replacing Pascal for number crunching, desktop applications 
and networking.

-- Bastiaan.
Sep 30
prev sibling next sibling parent Mike Shah <mshah.475 gmail.com> writes:
On Friday, 27 September 2024 at 18:49:27 UTC, Imperatorn wrote:

 In your opinion, what is the selling point of D, the top 3 use 
 cases where D would be a nice fit?

 D has struggled to find a niche (because it's so flexible?), 
 but is that also why it hasn't seen wider adoption?

 What do you think are the top 3 places where you think "I could 
 use D here instead of {language} because {reasons}"?


D is a productive systems language.

1. It's great for scripting (it's replace my Python, because the 
D language scales well as my scripts inevitably grow into full 
programs)
2. It's great for graphics/game programming (speed of compiled 
code, and language is malleable to allow redesign after 
prototyping)
3. I've also used D for network programming (slicing into bits, 
and using metaprogramming for serialization is a breeze)
Sep 30
prev sibling next sibling parent reply Atila Neves <atila.neves gmail.com> writes:
On Friday, 27 September 2024 at 18:49:27 UTC, Imperatorn wrote:

 In your opinion, what is the selling point of D, the top 3 use 
 cases where D would be a nice fit?


1. Everything.
2. Everything.
3. Everything.

:P


 D has struggled to find a niche (because it's so flexible?), 
 but is that also why it hasn't seen wider adoption?


I think that's probably part of it. It can do nearly anything.


 What do you think are the top 3 places where you think "I could 
 use D here instead of {language} because {reasons}"?


Subjectively, because D is the language that annoys me the least. 
Objectively, because I write less code with fewer bugs that does 
a lot more. In what other language can I write a dub package* 
that autowraps D code so it can be called in Excel and/or Python 
in two lines, one of which is an import??

* https://github.com/symmetryinvestments/autowrap
Sep 30
parent reply Araq <rumpf_a web.de> writes:
On Tuesday, 1 October 2024 at 02:56:11 UTC, Atila Neves wrote:


 Subjectively, because D is the language that annoys me the 
 least. Objectively, because I write less code with fewer bugs 
 that does a lot more. In what other language can I write a dub 
 package* that autowraps D code so it can be called in Excel 
 and/or Python in two lines, one of which is an import??

 * https://github.com/symmetryinvestments/autowrap


In any language with a decent macro system: Nim and probably 
Rust, Elixir and Julia...
Oct 08
parent Atila Neves <atila.neves gmail.com> writes:
On Tuesday, 8 October 2024 at 20:07:38 UTC, Araq wrote:

 On Tuesday, 1 October 2024 at 02:56:11 UTC, Atila Neves wrote:


 Subjectively, because D is the language that annoys me the 
 least. Objectively, because I write less code with fewer bugs 
 that does a lot more. In what other language can I write a dub 
 package* that autowraps D code so it can be called in Excel 
 and/or Python in two lines, one of which is an import??

 * https://github.com/symmetryinvestments/autowrap


 In any language with a decent macro system: Nim and probably 
 Rust, Elixir and Julia...


In Rust's case, at least, it would be a lot more code, and a lot 
more complicated. In D it's straightforward imperative code.

C++ is turing-complete at compile-time just as well as D is. But 
a lot harder to do.
Oct 08
prev sibling next sibling parent Kagamin <spam here.lot> writes:
On Friday, 27 September 2024 at 18:49:27 UTC, Imperatorn wrote:

 In your opinion, what is the selling point of D, the top 3 use 
 cases where D would be a nice fit?



a superior choice for that. I would use D for everything else.


 What do you think are the top 3 places where you think "I could 
 use D here instead of {language} because {reasons}"?


I found my current use of D is governed by legacy: I wrote enough 
D code for D to be useful. If I am to use another language I'll 
need to write this code again and probably also redesign it to 
fit the new language.
Sep 30
prev sibling next sibling parent Dejan Lekic <dejan.lekic gmail.com> writes:
On Friday, 27 September 2024 at 18:49:27 UTC, Imperatorn wrote:

 In your opinion, what is the selling point of D, the top 3 use 
 cases where D would be a nice fit?

 D has struggled to find a niche (because it's so flexible?), 
 but is that also why it hasn't seen wider adoption?

 What do you think are the top 3 places where you think "I could 
 use D here instead of {language} because {reasons}"?


1) Small hobby projects
2) Education
3) Quick snippets
Oct 01
prev sibling parent MrJay <mrjcraft2021 gmail.com> writes:
On Friday, 27 September 2024 at 18:49:27 UTC, Imperatorn wrote:

 In your opinion, what is the selling point of D, the top 3 use 
 cases where D would be a nice fit?

 D has struggled to find a niche (because it's so flexible?), 
 but is that also why it hasn't seen wider adoption?

 What do you think are the top 3 places where you think "I could 
 use D here instead of {language} because {reasons}"?


I dont know what it would be useful for in the wider context of 
software development I will just explain my use case.
I work in a fast paced industry where there are new things every 
single week, its art based and I need to write scripts to 
generate things very quickly they are one off and never used 
again, D is better for this than most other languages the only 
languages I found that were better for scripting were languages 
like Common lisp, scheme, and julia, languages like that are fast 
to write and fast to run. (obviously not including libraries 
otherwise python would be the best, as I prefer to write the code 
and not use libraries)

my second use case is long term production code for generating 
things for work, it needs to work for a long time, and be 
extended with scripts in emergencies, the production code also 
needs to be graphical at least at some point.

D is the only language I have found that allows me to do both the 
scripting workflow and production workflow in one language, every 
single other language I have tried has some major barrier, I 
checked dozens of programming languages, most have obvious issues 
where I didnt need to write any code to see it wasnt useful, like 
I refuse to use an interpreted language, or were too new for me 
to trust as I am going to be using the language for many years.

I think one reason people dont use D is because its good at 
everything, its good at scripting and production code, but for 
scripting its not as good as other languages, and for production 
code its not as good as other languages, most people are extreme 
in either of those directions, few people want balance, thus why 
they use Rust or Go for production, and python for scripting.

realistically I think its easy to prove its a dumb approach as 
many companies have spent millions of dollars re writing there 
python back-ends in faster languages, if they would have used D 
it literally would have saved millions of dollars, it should be 
an easy sell, D will save you money because worse case scenario 
you can always make your code faster, if you cant its a problems 
with your skills, not the language.

so to answer your questions D's best niche at least in my opinion 
is any situation where its a good idea to write a script first 
and write production code later, which is virtually everything.
Oct 01