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digitalmars.D - What do you think would be the key factors to drive mass adoption of

reply MacAsm <netorib94 gmail.com> writes:
A few ideas that come to mind:

-   A truly ****batteries-included IDE**** (something on the 

make a big difference? Right now the experience is mostly VS Code 
+ code-d + serve-d, which is decent but still feels fragmented 
compared to mainstream languages.
-   For corporate/enterprise environments in particular: do you 
think a modern ****GUI designer**** (visual drag-and-drop) would 
help a lot? Many teams still build desktop/business apps and love 
tools like WinForms Designer, WPF/XAML preview, or Qt Designer.
-   Alternatively — maybe a ****declarative UI language**** with 
live preview (something XAML-like, or even better: immediate 
hot-reload / live-reloading of UI + logic) would be more powerful 
and future-proof than a classic designer?

Beyond tooling:

-   Strong ****corporate backing**** (big companies using + 
sponsoring it)
-   Way more high-quality ****tutorials****, beginner-friendly 
learning paths, and real-world project examples
-   Active ****evangelists****, conference talks, YouTube 
content, and community momentum

What else do you see as important missing pieces? Better mobile / 
web / embedded? GC improvements or u/nogc-by-default push? 
Something completely different?

Curious to hear your thoughts.
Jan 21
next sibling parent Lance Bachmeier <no spam.net> writes:
This has been discussed many times before, but I'll offer a few 
thoughts.

It's a fantasy to view D as having any chance of widespread 
corporate adoption. That would require tooling, libraries, and a 
monetary advantage to adopting it. If you're choosing between 
Java, Go, and D in a corporate environment, it's hard to see that 
you're choosing D.

The places where it could be adopted is scripting, medium-sized 
solo projects, data analysis, and that sort of thing. Single 
developers using the language they like best. Unfortunately, 
that's never been a priority of D. There is no interest in 
evolving the language in ways that appeals to those users.


 -   A truly ****batteries-included IDE**** (something on the 

 that make a big difference? Right now the experience is mostly 
 VS Code + code-d + serve-d, which is decent but still feels 
 fragmented compared to mainstream languages.


This would definitely help.


 -   For corporate/enterprise environments in particular: do you 
 think a modern ****GUI designer**** (visual drag-and-drop) 
 would help a lot? Many teams still build desktop/business apps 
 and love tools like WinForms Designer, WPF/XAML preview, or Qt 
 Designer.


The first question to ask is why anyone would choose D over the 
alternatives. It's the "nobody ever got fired for buying IBM" 
thing. Corporations already have languages that work.


 -   Strong ****corporate backing**** (big companies using + 
 sponsoring it)


We have some of that already.


 -   Way more high-quality ****tutorials****, beginner-friendly 
 learning paths, and real-world project examples


Yes. This would lead to adoption in the areas I mentioned above.


 -   Active ****evangelists****, conference talks, YouTube 
 content, and community momentum


Ditto.


 What else do you see as important missing pieces? Better mobile 
 / web / embedded? GC improvements or u/nogc-by-default push? 
 Something completely different?


Web could be a growth opportunity but it's extremely competitive. 
Anything nogc is a dead end. Rust won that game. The game's over, 
the referees went home, and the janitors have locked the doors.
Jan 21
prev sibling next sibling parent GrimMaple <grimmaple95 gmail.com> writes:
Tools should solve problems. About 10 years ago, D had real edge
because it offered benefits that other languages didn't: it was
(as far as I'm concerned) the only natively compiled language
with GC and direct interfacing with C/C++. Personally, I came to

that to a lot of extents, and I hoped that it would improve on
those aspects. FF 10 years from that and:

* We have `rust`, which slowly takes over the low-level stuff
with its clever borrow checker (what we feel about it is 
unimportant)

native(!)
linux/windows code, but also allows interfacing with C by either
P/Invoke, either linking in a C .lib file directly into the code.
(I couldn't believe it myself, but it's doable, and doable easily)
* We have new langs pop up, like Zig or Carbon (where did it go 
btw?)
that try to lift "interfacing with C/C++" part and, as I heard, 
do it well.

This brings me to a reasonable conclusion: why would I keep using 
D


That being said,

On Thursday, 22 January 2026 at 00:57:04 UTC, MacAsm wrote:

 -   A truly ****batteries-included IDE****


That is my biggest pain point so far with D - it's painfully 
difficult

is night
and day.


 -   For corporate/enterprise environments in particular: do you 
 think a modern ****GUI designer**** (visual drag-and-drop) 
 would help a lot?


That kinda exists already, just needs further adoption (dlangui)


 -   Alternatively — maybe a ****declarative UI language**** 
 with live preview (something XAML-like, or even better: 
 immediate hot-reload / live-reloading of UI + logic) would be 
 more powerful and future-proof than a classic designer?


That kinda exists already, just needs further adoption (dlangui)


 -   Strong ****corporate backing**** (big companies using + 
 sponsoring it)


I think that corporate backing might actually do more harm, since
it will dictate where the language goes based on money input (and
not necessarily helping the adoption)


 -   Way more high-quality ****tutorials****, beginner-friendly 
 learning paths, and real-world project examples


Yes, I think D should spend more effort into promoting existing D 
projects,
and focus on getting the top-100 libs of dub.pm into phobos, or 
at least
just shipping them with the compiler as a "proposed solution" 
(OpenD does
this btw)


 -   Active ****evangelists****, conference talks, YouTube 
 content, and community momentum


Evangelists probably do more harm than good; finished usable 
projects
quietly do more to spread adoption (I think)


 What else do you see as important missing pieces?


I think D was fine as it was in around 2018~2020, and all it 
needed was
more focus on IDE support, third party libraries, and other QoL 
stuff.
Jan 22
prev sibling next sibling parent reply monkyyy <crazymonkyyy gmail.com> writes:
On Thursday, 22 January 2026 at 00:57:04 UTC, MacAsm wrote:

 A few ideas that come to mind:

 -   A truly ****batteries-included IDE**** (something on the 

 that make a big difference?


Impossible and not worth a damn. Templates and mixins will fight 
your attempts to parse it like the highly redundant, limited, 
bad, oo languages.

Just embrace the false positives of an language agnostic keyword 
highlighter


 Right now the experience is mostly VS Code + code-d + serve-d, 
 which is decent but still feels fragmented compared to 
 mainstream languages.


Strongly disagree, throw it away and get a dumb text editor.

 -   For corporate/enterprise environments in particular: do you 
 think a modern ****GUI designer****


Ui will be even more web focused post ai; its coming and native 
lost years ago to electron. D will not be undoing the trend.

Hope you all enjoy 1 gb web app tabs, and dom as a debugger.


 -   Strong ****corporate backing**** (big companies using + 
 sponsoring it)


I to would also like money for free, but this is not really 
actionable


 What else do you see as important missing pieces? Better mobile 
 / web / embedded? GC improvements or u/nogc-by-default push? 
 Something completely different?


Actually shipping data structures and algorithms. Its more and 
more ovisous other languages will not be catching up on 
templates; they aint even trying and c++ is c++. You can just do 
things.
Jan 22
parent Kapendev <alexandroskapretsos gmail.com> writes:
On Thursday, 22 January 2026 at 12:50:05 UTC, monkyyy wrote:

 On Thursday, 22 January 2026 at 00:57:04 UTC, MacAsm wrote:

 Right now the experience is mostly VS Code + code-d + serve-d, 
 which is decent but still feels fragmented compared to 
 mainstream languages.


 Strongly disagree, throw it away and get a dumb text editor.


Just use [Pulsar](https://pulsar-edit.dev/) or [Lite 
XL](https://lite-xl.com/).
It's 2028 guys, VSCode is so last year.


 What else do you see as important missing pieces? Better 
 mobile / web / embedded? GC improvements or u/nogc-by-default 
 push? Something completely different?


 Actually shipping data structures and algorithms. Its more and 
 more ovisous other languages will not be catching up on 
 templates; they aint even trying and c++ is c++. You can just 
 do things.


Just adding a basic arena in Phobos would make D 100X better out 
of the box than most GC languages. Don't even need an allocator 
API for that. Just pass a buffer and let the user pick if it is 
from `new` or `malloc`.
Jan 22
prev sibling next sibling parent reply Dejan Lekic <dejan.lekic gmail.com> writes:
It is very simple - you will not see mass adoption if average 
user needs to spend days, weeks even months implementing "missing 
pieces" for her/his project.

D lacks fully tested and fully-featured packages that are 
comparable in quality to packages for other languages. D 
ecosystem has thousands of packages (projects) that do something, 
but that something is in 98% of cases a very limited feature-set. 
Kudos to those who went "extra mile" and implemented fully 
featured packages.

I already hear people saying "those who want those missing 
features are welcome to submit PRs". - Sure, but why would they 
even decide to use D when they know they will spend days 
fixing/improving incomplete D package(s), when they simply can 
turn to Python, Go, Rust and find everything they need to get the 
job done?
Jan 22
parent reply jmh530 <john.michael.hall gmail.com> writes:
On Thursday, 22 January 2026 at 14:46:38 UTC, Dejan Lekic wrote:

 It is very simple - you will not see mass adoption if average 
 user needs to spend days, weeks even months implementing 
 "missing pieces" for her/his project.

 D lacks fully tested and fully-featured packages that are 
 comparable in quality to packages for other languages. D 
 ecosystem has thousands of packages (projects) that do 
 something, but that something is in 98% of cases a very limited 
 feature-set. Kudos to those who went "extra mile" and 
 implemented fully featured packages.

 I already hear people saying "those who want those missing 
 features are welcome to submit PRs". - Sure, but why would they 
 even decide to use D when they know they will spend days 
 fixing/improving incomplete D package(s), when they simply can 
 turn to Python, Go, Rust and find everything they need to get 
 the job done?


The easier D can make it to call code from Python/Go/Rust, the 
less of an issue that is.

Of course, importC means that D can call a lot of C libraries. 
The better the support gets for that, then the easier it is to 
just tell people don't reinvest the wheel unless you have a good 
reason to.
Jan 22
parent reply GrimMaple <grimmaple95 gmail.com> writes:
On Thursday, 22 January 2026 at 16:29:22 UTC, jmh530 wrote:

 The easier D can make it to call code from Python/Go/Rust, the 
 less of an issue that is.


What's the point of using D if you're gonna call Go/Rust, just 
use Go/Rust?
Jan 23
next sibling parent reply Juraj <junk vec4.xyz> writes:
On Friday, 23 January 2026 at 14:51:22 UTC, GrimMaple wrote:

 On Thursday, 22 January 2026 at 16:29:22 UTC, jmh530 wrote:

 The easier D can make it to call code from Python/Go/Rust, the 
 less of an issue that is.


 What's the point of using D if you're gonna call Go/Rust, just 
 use Go/Rust?


For me it comes to  ergonomics of the language. I also hate when 
I have to use 4 languages in one project. I know some people do 
not mind, but I do.
When I develop, I do not chase popularity, I chase my own joy of 
creation, for that I need a language that let me express myself.


Juraj
Jan 23
parent reply Sergey <kornburn yandex.ru> writes:
On Friday, 23 January 2026 at 15:04:33 UTC, Juraj wrote:

 For me it comes to  ergonomics of the language. I also hate 
 when I have to use 4 languages in one project. I know some 
 people do not mind, but I do.


Its good that your area is allowing to do that. Many areas just 
cant exist with monolanguage approach. It is economically 
unreasonable.


 When I develop, I do not chase popularity, I chase my own joy 
 of creation, for that I need a language that let me express 
 myself.


Again its good that it works for you, but some areas really need 
some libraries.
And popularity is giving these libraries from official project 
owners.
Also it is giving the knowledge of "battle tested" libraries, and 
not "used by 2 persons for hobby projects". It is also important.
And some areas are different from low-level embedding systems - 
there is no C libraries there.
Jan 23
next sibling parent Kapendev <alexandroskapretsos gmail.com> writes:
On Friday, 23 January 2026 at 19:34:25 UTC, Sergey wrote:

 On Friday, 23 January 2026 at 15:04:33 UTC, Juraj wrote:

 For me it comes to  ergonomics of the language. I also hate 
 when I have to use 4 languages in one project. I know some 
 people do not mind, but I do.


 Its good that your area is allowing to do that. Many areas just 
 cant exist with monolanguage approach. It is economically 
 unreasonable.


 When I develop, I do not chase popularity, I chase my own joy 
 of creation, for that I need a language that let me express 
 myself.


 Again its good that it works for you, but some areas really 
 need some libraries.
 And popularity is giving these libraries from official project 
 owners.
 Also it is giving the knowledge of "battle tested" libraries, 
 and not "used by 2 persons for hobby projects". It is also 
 important.
 And some areas are different from low-level embedding systems - 
 there is no C libraries there.


To be honest (again), a lot of code out there feels like a hobby 
project, except without the joy that usually makes hobby projects 
worthwhile.
It's *crazy* how bad software is in 2029...
Jan 23
prev sibling parent Kapendev <alexandroskapretsos gmail.com> writes:
On Friday, 23 January 2026 at 19:34:25 UTC, Sergey wrote:

 Its good that your area is allowing to do that. Many areas just 
 cant exist with monolanguage approach. It is economically 
 unreasonable.


I changed my mind about this and now use **ALL** the languages.
More programming languages = More open-source contributors

![awesome image of 10 languages in one 
project](https://gcdnb.pbrd.co/images/gnKVfxsadh1h.png?o=1)
Jan 24
prev sibling next sibling parent jmh530 <john.michael.hall gmail.com> writes:
On Friday, 23 January 2026 at 14:51:22 UTC, GrimMaple wrote:

 On Thursday, 22 January 2026 at 16:29:22 UTC, jmh530 wrote:

 The easier D can make it to call code from Python/Go/Rust, the 
 less of an issue that is.


 What's the point of using D if you're gonna call Go/Rust, just 
 use Go/Rust?


It's more that if you have some existing D code and you find that 
someone else solved your problem in Go/Rust (or Python or R or C 
or whatever), then you may be able to proceed faster by calling 
that Go/Rust code. They also may have done one part of what you 
want in those languages, but not all of it.

And sometimes you're right that it's just faster for me to write 
R/Python code than try to deal with doing a hybrid project.
Jan 23
prev sibling parent reply Lance Bachmeier <no spam.net> writes:
On Friday, 23 January 2026 at 14:51:22 UTC, GrimMaple wrote:

 On Thursday, 22 January 2026 at 16:29:22 UTC, jmh530 wrote:

 The easier D can make it to call code from Python/Go/Rust, the 
 less of an issue that is.


 What's the point of using D if you're gonna call Go/Rust, just 
 use Go/Rust?


If I had to use Go or Rust on a regular basis, I would stop 
programming entirely. If there's something written in Go or Rust, 
but it's got a C interface, that doesn't stop me from using it 
from D. It's surprising how often this gets thrown around when 
you consider that one of the main selling points from the 
beginning was C interoperability.
Jan 23
parent reply matheus <matheus gmail.com> writes:
On Friday, 23 January 2026 at 22:32:19 UTC, Lance Bachmeier wrote:

 ...
 If I had to use Go or Rust on a regular basis, I would stop 
 programming entirely...


I don't know anything about Go besides its name, now about Rust I 
honestly never understood the "hype", but I find interesting it 
could find so many big corporations funding this language in so 
small time frame.

Matheus.
Jan 24
parent monkyyy <crazymonkyyy gmail.com> writes:
On Sunday, 25 January 2026 at 00:10:17 UTC, matheus wrote:

  but I find interesting it could find so many big corporations 
 funding this language in so small time frame.


"public-private partnerships" determined that a top down 
declaration that c was to old and needed safety and rust made a 
"political-desirable" community and "authoritatively credible" 
case for the borrow checker.

You can just read the chip act and the nist article; its not 
rocket surgery. There a big pile of money if you convince the 
government your part of the next "digital supply chain".

Its all smoke, its for hype projects not actually foundational 
work, and will disappear when the political tides turn; Id be 
very shocked if the ai language when the money runs out and you 
have to ship a product on time with 1000x less compute, doesn't 
end up being gc'd, because its a zero effort solution for a trade 
off in quality and quality isnt going to be on the table.
Jan 24
prev sibling next sibling parent Guillaume Piolat <first.nam_e gmail.com> writes:
On Thursday, 22 January 2026 at 00:57:04 UTC, MacAsm wrote:

 Curious to hear your thoughts.


Common knowledge seemed to be than availability of open-source 
libraries matters most.

Nowadays I'd say ideas like those of D needs to be mediated by 
influencers like Mike Shah. There is no idea that can generate 
the public if it's not mediated by some kind of Youtube 
preach/cult.

See_also: how a popular programming influencer can get many 
eyeballs on D in a way an article cannot.

Most of D competitive advantage are kind hard to wrap-up in a 
video so we need some kind of narrative coat on top of it, to 
make the advantage relatable.

To paraphrase Spinoza, "There is no intrinsic force in a true 
idea."
Jan 23
prev sibling next sibling parent reply Lars Johansson <lasse 11dim.se> writes:
On Thursday, 22 January 2026 at 00:57:04 UTC, MacAsm wrote:

 A few ideas that come to mind:


I been working in the big enterprise world my entire life as an 
‘IT  guy’ low and high. I think I know a bit about this topic.
I fully agree with Lance Bachmeier, but I add some comments.
First you need to differentiate between admin IT and tech IT. 
Most of you here probably belong to the tech group, engineers 
developing products one way or another.
I belong to the admin bunch, i.e. support operations,  
maintaining IT systems, developing programs within frameworks 
like ERP systems. The vast majority of IT workers are ‘admin’.
No admin in their right mind  would ever use a language like D 
(or C, C++ or any similar language).
Most admins never learn to program, those who do  in general only 
want to use the first language they learned. Today they probably 
learn Phython. )If you like expensive cars and smart suites you 
still  learn ABAP.)
D was never an option for the admins. Even worse less and less 
admin software development is done in the corporate world, they 
buy products from the software industry.
The techies I have discussed language with do not know D and are 
not interested in it because it is not C++.
How to promote D? Evangelists are necessary. Try to get 
universities interested (support Mike Shah he is doing a terrific 
job). Help bloggers like tsoding use D. Pray for a young genius 
develop something spectacular in D.
I'm sorry, I think the future is  rather bleak for D.
Jan 25
next sibling parent reply Serg Gini <kornburn yandex.ru> writes:
On Monday, 26 January 2026 at 06:14:51 UTC, Lars Johansson wrote:

 I'm sorry, I think the future is  rather bleak for D.


I think future of D is the same as we see it today =)
As somebody said in the discord:
"If it could die, it would already have died."

Which I'm not completely agree with that. In history we saw some 
long stories being finished like Nokia and Blackberry for 
example. But to make this happen a significant shift should 
explode the market significantly so others smaller or less 
flexible players won't be able to adapt.

First bell already happened with ARM architecture recently.
And this time GCC/LLVM helped D to "stay in business"..

But now LLM/AI wave is getting bigger.. and what if something 
completely new will come.. And it will be so new that nor GCC nor 
LLVM will support it? And only some MLIR for example or even new 
IR built from scratch will be required for this (cheap quantum 
light base RISC-V :D) ..
And only big langs who will have resources to port their 
compilers to this new arch will survive.
To be able to do this you need people and resources, and this is 
where popularity and adoption is able to help. Otherwise the 
rewrite to another stack could be easier/cheaper than porting D 
to the "new world".

But in which part I agree with the initial point - is that D is 
pretty "antifragile" in its niche..
New things are popping up, but many D devs don't really care - 
they like what D is offering to them for their small tools and 
hobby projects.. and this pattern is not going to change from my 
perspective
Jan 25
next sibling parent reply Mindy (0xEAB) <desisma heidel.beer> writes:
On Monday, 26 January 2026 at 07:51:15 UTC, Serg Gini wrote:

 and what if something completely new will come..



“The more things change the more they stay the same.”
— Jon Bon Jovi, Richard Sambora
Jan 26
parent Serg Gini <kornburn yandex.ru> writes:
On Monday, 26 January 2026 at 12:10:48 UTC, Mindy (0xEAB) wrote:

 On Monday, 26 January 2026 at 07:51:15 UTC, Serg Gini wrote:

 and what if something completely new will come..


 “The more things change the more they stay the same.”
 — Jon Bon Jovi, Richard Sambora


Quote from monkyyy's video:

**If you want to understand any society
Don't listen what is it saying about itself
Look at what it creates**

I found it's pretty relevant to this topic :)

PS thanks monkyyy for the video - it was nice
Jan 26
prev sibling parent monkyyy <crazymonkyyy gmail.com> writes:
On Monday, 26 January 2026 at 07:51:15 UTC, Serg Gini wrote:

 
 But now LLM/AI wave is getting bigger.. and what if something 
 completely new will come..


ai is less capable and more willing to endure annoyences.

It will be the old things it happens to work with. Ai will be 
bash commands, and markdown, and ssh. I dont think we will even 
get a different web browser, it will be chromium dom watchers.
Jan 26
prev sibling next sibling parent user1234 <user1234 12.de> writes:
On Monday, 26 January 2026 at 06:14:51 UTC, Lars Johansson wrote:

 On Thursday, 22 January 2026 at 00:57:04 UTC, MacAsm wrote:

 A few ideas that come to mind:


 I been working in the big enterprise world my entire life as an 
 ‘IT  guy’ low and high. I think I know a bit about this topic.
 I fully agree with Lance Bachmeier, but I add some comments.
 First you need to differentiate between admin IT and tech IT. 
 Most of you here probably belong to the tech group, engineers 
 developing products one way or another.
 I belong to the admin bunch, i.e. support operations,  
 maintaining IT systems, developing programs within frameworks 
 like ERP systems. The vast majority of IT workers are ‘admin’.
 No admin in their right mind  would ever use a language like D 
 (or C, C++ or any similar language).
 Most admins never learn to program, those who do  in general 
 only want to use the first language they learned. Today they 
 probably learn Phython. )If you like expensive cars and smart 
 suites you still  learn ABAP.)
 D was never an option for the admins. Even worse less and less 
 admin software development is done in the corporate world, they 
 buy products from the software industry.
 The techies I have discussed language with do not know D and 
 are not interested in it because it is not C++.
 How to promote D? Evangelists are necessary. Try to get 
 universities interested (support Mike Shah he is doing a 
 terrific job). Help bloggers like tsoding use D. Pray for a 
 young genius develop something spectacular in D.
 I'm sorry, I think the future is  rather bleak for D.


Ah lol devops.

Horrible. In the past specialiazed comapanies sold websites to 
people who did not need any... now they try sell IA to people who 
dont need it. Roaming in the country with the team. Awefull 
people.
Jan 26
prev sibling parent monkyyy <crazymonkyyy gmail.com> writes:
On Monday, 26 January 2026 at 06:14:51 UTC, Lars Johansson wrote:

 
 I'm sorry, I think the future is  rather bleak for D.


Our leadership is doing a random walk, but almost all other 
languages are as well, if not walking backwards 
intentionally(cough rust), a race with very slow contestants its 
not impossible that we win.

In the land of the blind the one eyed man is king

---

Our fundamental types are broken, its nothing compared to c++ but 
its still just true that when I work on a numbery generic 
function and I want a litteral, I have one option, .init in ints 
it 0 in floats its a "LOL FUCK YOU"

Someone added range functions to nullable, so thats little 
feature I wouldve never even considered but now theres not a 
clean divide between lists and elements.

Trait hell sucks, its not actually user friendly enough it takes 
hours to untangle a simple thing, we should attack it from a 
different angle and make a type-api like the range api thats just 
a list of required keywords that get a good enough result. Ship 
data structures. And we be so far ahead of everyone elses meta 
programming.
Jan 26
prev sibling next sibling parent Doigt <labog outlook.com> writes:
On Thursday, 22 January 2026 at 00:57:04 UTC, MacAsm wrote:

 A few ideas that come to mind:


That ship has sailed long ago. D is condemned to be a niche hobby 
language, but please do go on...


 -   A truly ****batteries-included IDE**** (something on the 

 that make a big difference? Right now the experience is mostly 
 VS Code + code-d + serve-d, which is decent but still feels 
 fragmented compared to mainstream languages.


There are only 2 ways this can be done:
1. Find someone who can do it and pay them full time forever.
2. Do it yourself full time forever.

There's a reason SharpDevelop, MonoDevelop and many other such 
IDEs died. They couldn't catch up to the corporations. They were 
always behind and eventually they burned out. A D ide will never 
catch up to D itself, nevermind all the other languages out there.


 -   For corporate/enterprise environments in particular: do you 
 think a modern ****GUI designer**** (visual drag-and-drop) 
 would help a lot? Many teams still build desktop/business apps 
 and love tools like WinForms Designer, WPF/XAML preview, or Qt 
 Designer.


For that, you'd need a good GUI lib first and it needs to work 
well on Windows. Then once you have that, see my reply above 
about the IDE thing.


 -   Alternatively — maybe a ****declarative UI language**** 
 with live preview (something XAML-like, or even better: 
 immediate hot-reload / live-reloading of UI + logic) would be 
 more powerful and future-proof than a classic designer?


Other things I wanted for Christmas were a ¢20 canadian coin, 
rock from mars, DDR5 memory sticks for cheap and peace in the 
world, but Santa skipped my chimney again.


 Beyond tooling:

 -   Strong ****corporate backing**** (big companies using + 
 sponsoring it)


Actually that's the one thing we have.


 -   Way more high-quality ****tutorials****, beginner-friendly 
 learning paths, and real-world project examples


Making tutorials is basically a full time job. Do you know how 
time consuming that is? I tried to do it once. Even a small 
nothing can take hours to script, shoot and edit. Even just 
textual tutorials; you still need to write it (and it's harder to 
explain something in text only), find or make good pictures, etc. 
and way less people read nowadays.


 -   Active ****evangelists****, conference talks, YouTube 
 content, and community momentum


Evangelism is overrated. I know from first hand experience. I 
used to be a D evangelist. The people I managed to attract to D 
didn't stay. I first learned about D in 2021. I started talking 
about D on campuses and showcasing it to students and professors 
I know in 2022 (+ some people in various programming discord 
groups). I did it until last year in 2025. So about 3 years of 
evangelism. In that time, I estimate to have "recruited" about 25 
ish people. Of those, most didn't stick with D. I know only a 
single person who stuck with it. Evangelism is very inefficient.


 What else do you see as important missing pieces?


Docs in the 10 most spoken languages in the world would help a 
lot. One of the challenges I faced when trying to get people into 
D was the lack of learning material in French, which is the 
native language of the people in Quebec, where I'm from (and QC 
is very bilingual, so if that's an issue here, I can't imagine 
about more unilingual places).
Jan 26
prev sibling next sibling parent Mindy (0xEAB) <desisma heidel.beer> writes:
On Thursday, 22 January 2026 at 00:57:04 UTC, MacAsm wrote:

 What else do you see as important missing pieces?


More of these threads /s
Jan 27
prev sibling next sibling parent reply slimper <basp1984 gmail.com> writes:
On Thursday, 22 January 2026 at 00:57:04 UTC, MacAsm wrote:

 A few ideas that come to mind:

 -   A truly ****batteries-included IDE**** (something on the 

 that make a big difference? Right now the experience is mostly 
 VS Code + code-d + serve-d, which is decent but still feels 
 fragmented compared to mainstream languages.
 -   For corporate/enterprise environments in particular: do you 
 think a modern ****GUI designer**** (visual drag-and-drop) 
 would help a lot? Many teams still build desktop/business apps 
 and love tools like WinForms Designer, WPF/XAML preview, or Qt 
 Designer.
 -   Alternatively — maybe a ****declarative UI language**** 
 with live preview (something XAML-like, or even better: 
 immediate hot-reload / live-reloading of UI + logic) would be 
 more powerful and future-proof than a classic designer?

 Beyond tooling:

 -   Strong ****corporate backing**** (big companies using + 
 sponsoring it)
 -   Way more high-quality ****tutorials****, beginner-friendly 
 learning paths, and real-world project examples
 -   Active ****evangelists****, conference talks, YouTube 
 content, and community momentum

 What else do you see as important missing pieces? Better mobile 
 / web / embedded? GC improvements or u/nogc-by-default push? 
 Something completely different?

 Curious to hear your thoughts.


What was written above is a consequence of why D didn't become 
popular 10-15 years ago.

I agree with everything mentioned above. But it's strange that no 
one has mentioned what I consider to be the main problems behind 
D's lack of popularity. The half-baked implementation of the 
compiler and standard library. The indecisiveness in choosing 
concepts, APIs, and development direction.

D is an excellent language, but it tries to be too many things at 
once. As a result, the already limited resources get spread even 
thinner, and quality suffers.
Jan 27
next sibling parent reply Serg Gini <kornburn yandex.ru> writes:
On Wednesday, 28 January 2026 at 06:17:01 UTC, slimper wrote:

 What was written above is a consequence of why D didn't become 
 popular 10-15 years ago.

 I agree with everything mentioned above. But it's strange that 
 no one has mentioned what I consider to be the main problems 
 behind D's lack of popularity. The half-baked implementation of 
 the compiler and standard library. The indecisiveness in 
 choosing concepts, APIs, and development direction.

 D is an excellent language, but it tries to be too many things 
 at once. As a result, the already limited resources get spread 
 even thinner, and quality suffers.


This was already mentioned million times yeah..

But I think there is a trick which could try to switch cons into 
pros by shifting mindset paradigm..
what you wrote is relevant for real production/business usage, 
while for hobby programming having many powerful and flexible 
(even half-backed) options could be fine/fun..

And as AI is going to kill business coding in any case, D could 
leverage on being fun and pleasant to use :)

How now people are going after work to painting classes or 
playing their amateur music.. in future they could finish their 
work (validating tons of AI-generated code in boring corporate 
languages) and go to "D coding evening sessions" where they will 
manually crafting things, fixing bugs in compiler and doing 
similar things - what a joy :)
Jan 27
parent slimper <basp1984 gmail.com> writes:
On Wednesday, 28 January 2026 at 07:16:57 UTC, Serg Gini wrote:

 On Wednesday, 28 January 2026 at 06:17:01 UTC, slimper wrote:

 [...]


 This was already mentioned million times yeah..

 But I think there is a trick which could try to switch cons 
 into pros by shifting mindset paradigm..
 what you wrote is relevant for real production/business usage, 
 while for hobby programming having many powerful and flexible 
 (even half-backed) options could be fine/fun..

 And as AI is going to kill business coding in any case, D could 
 leverage on being fun and pleasant to use :)

 How now people are going after work to painting classes or 
 playing their amateur music.. in future they could finish their 
 work (validating tons of AI-generated code in boring corporate 
 languages) and go to "D coding evening sessions" where they 
 will manually crafting things, fixing bugs in compiler and 
 doing similar things - what a joy :)


I remember back in 2006, waiting for the language and standard 
library to finally stabilize so I could use D in production... 
It's now 2026, and I'm still waiting :)

And what's more, the immaturity and the attempt to clumsily play 
every instrument at once is still somehow seen as a feature
Jan 27
prev sibling parent reply Kapendev <alexandroskapretsos gmail.com> writes:
On Wednesday, 28 January 2026 at 06:17:01 UTC, slimper wrote:

 But it's strange that no one has mentioned what I consider to 
 be the main problems behind D's lack of popularity. The 
 half-baked implementation of the compiler and standard library. 
 The indecisiveness in choosing concepts, APIs, and development 
 direction.


Not saying you never had an issue, but it's more helpful to be a 
bit specific about your "half-baked implementation of the 
compiler and standard library" comment because it sounds crazy on 
its own.
I personally never had a compiler issue, and about the standard 
library, I never had any serious problems with it. D's standard 
library might have some interesting names or quirks sometimes, 
but overall it's a nice tool. It's also good to keep in mind that 
big standard libraries tend to have issues like that in any 
language.


 D is an excellent language, but it tries to be too many things 
 at once. As a result, the already limited resources get spread 
 even thinner, and quality suffers.


Again, more info about this is always welcome. What are "too many 
things" and "resources get spread even thinner and quality 
suffers" supposed to mean in this case? I only see good things 
right now.

---

Anyway, I hate the popularity meme. It's a good one to see the 
opinions of some people here, but overall this conversation is a 
waste of time. No action and all talk. One reason I like D now 
more than I used to is because **I made it better in the places I 
care about**! Take the awesome-d project as an example. Some 
people were complaining about it, while I just thought it could 
be better. So, I opened some PRs and now I'm happy with it. The 
funny part is that I was the only one who actually contributed, 
even though I was the least vocal person. You can just do things.
Jan 28
next sibling parent reply Serg Gini <kornburn yandex.ru> writes:
On Wednesday, 28 January 2026 at 08:43:00 UTC, Kapendev wrote:

 Anyway, I hate the popularity meme. It's a good one to see the 
 opinions of some people here, but overall this conversation is 
 a waste of time. No action and all talk.


true


 One reason I like D now more than I used to is because **I made 
 it better in the places I care about**! Take the awesome-d 
 project as an example. Some people were complaining about it, 
 while I just thought it could be better. So, I opened some PRs 
 and now I'm happy with it.


It became a bit better now. Thanks for keeping improving it :)


 The funny part is that I was the only one who actually 
 contributed, even though I was the least vocal person. You can 
 just do things.


Others are contributing there as well..
But awesome-d has very limited power for changes
Jan 28
parent reply Kapendev <alexandroskapretsos gmail.com> writes:
On Wednesday, 28 January 2026 at 09:42:43 UTC, Serg Gini wrote:

 It became a bit better now. Thanks for keeping improving it :)


It's delightfully better. PRs are welcome.


 The funny part is that I was the only one who actually 
 contributed, even though I was the least vocal person. You can 
 just do things.


 Others are contributing there as well..
 But awesome-d has very limited power for changes


No, they didn't. And my issue is specifically with the people 
that talk all the time and **expect others to do things**. Of 
course people have other things in life and that's fine, but 
would not hurt to be less demanding.
Jan 28
next sibling parent reply Serg Gini <kornburn yandex.ru> writes:
On Wednesday, 28 January 2026 at 16:47:16 UTC, Kapendev wrote:

 No, they didn't. And my issue is specifically with the people 
 that talk all the time and **expect others to do things**.


I wonder to see who are these guys..
Jan 28
parent Kapendev <alexandroskapretsos gmail.com> writes:
On Wednesday, 28 January 2026 at 17:08:26 UTC, Serg Gini wrote:

 On Wednesday, 28 January 2026 at 16:47:16 UTC, Kapendev wrote:

 No, they didn't. And my issue is specifically with the people 
 that talk all the time and **expect others to do things**.


 I wonder to see who are these guys..


You did help me with the CI, so you are fine.
Btw that Ruby script is so bad...
Jan 28
prev sibling parent reply slimper <basp1984 gmail.com> writes:
On Wednesday, 28 January 2026 at 16:47:16 UTC, Kapendev wrote:

 On Wednesday, 28 January 2026 at 09:42:43 UTC, Serg Gini wrote:

 It became a bit better now. Thanks for keeping improving it :)


 It's delightfully better. PRs are welcome.


 The funny part is that I was the only one who actually 
 contributed, even though I was the least vocal person. You 
 can just do things.


 Others are contributing there as well..
 But awesome-d has very limited power for changes


 No, they didn't. And my issue is specifically with the people 
 that talk all the time and **expect others to do things**. Of 
 course people have other things in life and that's fine, but 
 would not hurt to be less demanding.


I agree with you! It's just that the last 20 years have shown 
that this plan isn't working. And no one (myself, at least) is 
demanding that D be developed differently. There's just a sense 
of regret that such a wonderful language is where it is today.
Jan 28
parent Sergey <kornburn yandex.ru> writes:
On Wednesday, 28 January 2026 at 17:38:54 UTC, slimper wrote:

 of regret that such a wonderful language is where it is today.


It’s better don’t think about this missed opportunity..
And be just chill D enjoyer of small cozy projects :)
Jan 28
prev sibling parent reply Lance Bachmeier <no spam.net> writes:
On Wednesday, 28 January 2026 at 08:43:00 UTC, Kapendev wrote:



 Anyway, I hate the popularity meme. It's a good one to see the 
 opinions of some people here, but overall this conversation is 
 a waste of time. No action and all talk.


This is fine advice at the micro level. If you want to improve a 
third-party library to meet your needs and share your work with 
the community, go ahead. The higher the level, the more important 
it is to have less action and more talk.

- Do community members understand where the language is going?
- Do you have community members that buy in to what the project 
is trying to achieve?
- Does an outsider see a vision that makes them want to join and 
contribute?
- Can a company considering adoption understand where things are, 
where things are going, and trust that there will be an active 
community going forward?

Randomly doing things because they're cool and interesting is 
fun, and perfectly fine for one's own purposes. Indeed, that's 
how things got to where they are today, with lots of half-done 
and poorly documented dub packages and limited tooling. If that's 
all that's happening, the language doesn't have much to offer, 
unfortunately. Rust didn't take off because a bunch of people 
decided all it took was action without a plan.
Jan 28
parent reply Kapendev <alexandroskapretsos gmail.com> writes:
On Wednesday, 28 January 2026 at 15:41:57 UTC, Lance Bachmeier 
wrote:

 This is fine advice at the micro level. Randomly doing things 
 because they're cool and interesting is fun, and perfectly fine 
 for one's own purposes. Indeed, that's how things got to where 
 they are today, with lots of half-done and poorly documented 
 dub packages and limited tooling. If that's all that's 
 happening, the language doesn't have much to offer, 
 unfortunately. Rust didn't take off because a bunch of people 
 decided all it took was action without a plan.


You are missing the point and assuming too much about what I 
said. I never said "randomly doing things" is good or that you 
should do something like that. I also have no idea about what 
Rust plan you are talking about.
Jan 28
parent reply Lance Bachmeier <no spam.net> writes:
On Wednesday, 28 January 2026 at 16:30:44 UTC, Kapendev wrote:

 On Wednesday, 28 January 2026 at 15:41:57 UTC, Lance Bachmeier 
 wrote:

 This is fine advice at the micro level. Randomly doing things 
 because they're cool and interesting is fun, and perfectly 
 fine for one's own purposes. Indeed, that's how things got to 
 where they are today, with lots of half-done and poorly 
 documented dub packages and limited tooling. If that's all 
 that's happening, the language doesn't have much to offer, 
 unfortunately. Rust didn't take off because a bunch of people 
 decided all it took was action without a plan.


 You are missing the point and assuming too much about what I 
 said. I never said "randomly doing things" is good or that you 
 should do something like that. I also have no idea about what 
 Rust plan you are talking about.


I didn't miss the point. I quoted what I was responding to: "this 
conversation is a waste of time. No action and all talk." If 
anything gets done as a group, it takes a lot of discussion, 
particularly when you're expecting people to donate their time. 
You were dismissive of the original post. I'm saying it's not 
going to move the needle if you have lots of people doing their 
own thing because they don't want to think at a higher level.
Jan 28
parent Kapendev <alexandroskapretsos gmail.com> writes:
On Wednesday, 28 January 2026 at 21:16:51 UTC, Lance Bachmeier 
wrote:

 I didn't miss the point. I quoted what I was responding to: 
 "this conversation is a waste of time. No action and all talk." 
 If anything gets done as a group, it takes a lot of discussion, 
 particularly when you're expecting people to donate their time. 
 You were dismissive of the original post. I'm saying it's not 
 going to move the needle if you have lots of people doing their 
 own thing because they don't want to think at a higher level.


I'm sorry. What is the high level plan?
Jan 28
prev sibling parent reply Dukc <ajieskola gmail.com> writes:
On Thursday, 22 January 2026 at 00:57:04 UTC, MacAsm wrote:

 What else do you see as important missing pieces? Better mobile 
 / web / embedded? GC improvements or u/nogc-by-default push? 
 Something completely different?

 Curious to hear your thoughts.


My guess is it's more of a marketing/networking than a technical 
issue.

As I understand it, all non-mainstream languages are a bit 
unpolished, have relatively few tutorials, relatively little 
support in IDE tooling and so on compared to the biggest 
mainstream languages. It isn't D-specific.

The only way to compete in those areas is to become big first by 
other means. The people and organisations that demand top-class 
tutorials and tooling simply aren't a relevant target audience 
for a small-ish language. The language should instead appeal to 
those who have some willingness to experiment with new technology 
and some patience to deal with teething issues.

I'm a fan of another relatively new technology that is yet to 
become mainstream: the [Nix package manager](https://nixos.org). 
At least my experience is that Nix has far more issues typical of 
new technology than D, yet it is about as popular as it can be 
without being quite mainstream (and it's good points are really, 
*really* good). Yes, it has a LOT of packages, but once you need 
to use something that's not already packaged for it it's going to 
get rather involved. Meaning, it still has "bad ecosystem" 
problems in its own way, on top of relatively bad documentation 
and other teething issues, especially around flakes. I bring this 
up because IMO it shows that D has smoothened its teething issues 
more than enough for the kind of user who really want a cutting 
edge language. If people can deal with an operating system built 
around Nix, D is a walk in the park.

Then again, I'm far from knowledgeable on how the marketplace of 
ideas works and my intuition in these cases is bad. I'm not very 
confident in this assessment even myself and neither should you 
be, unless your own experience supports it.
Jan 28
parent reply Julian Fondren <julian.fondren gmail.com> writes:
On Wednesday, 28 January 2026 at 20:12:33 UTC, Dukc wrote:

 My guess is it's more of a marketing/networking than a 
 technical issue.


In the long run it's all language design, because language design 
is what appeals to people who provide the marketing and technical 
fixes. Python overtaking Perl at a time when it was grossly 
inferior in *every* way except for design is a good case of this. 
Language design also decides if some high-level goal ("fast 
compilation", "good editor support") is an easy or a hard 
technical challenge. For example,


 As I understand it, all non-mainstream languages are a bit 
 unpolished, have relatively few tutorials, relatively little 
 support in IDE tooling and so on compared to the biggest 
 mainstream languages.


OCaml has had 3000 AD editor support since before LSPs, even 
better than Kotlin which comes from an IDE company and had a good 
IDE experience as a highlighted design constraint.

For another language, the editor support is a frequent source of 
complaints: it crashes, it bugs out, it tries to use all memory. 
Well, this other language also has often-used Common Lisp-tier 
macros, CTFE, implicit imports, complex overloading rules, and 
subtle syntax.

OCaml has very fast separate compilation while some languages 
today have been on a decade-long quest to somewhat improve 
compile speeds. There are design reasons for that too. It isn't 
only that Rust was lacking in corporate interest in making it 
compile faster.

With D, you can paste in some C code and know that you'll either 
get C's behavior or a clear error. This prevents D from having 
Zig's certainty that weird integer promotion rules aren't 
screwing with some code. (It also wards somewhat against Zig's 
verbosity.) I can see the appeal of this for migrating from C or 
for using some C hacker delight code in D - but not anymore. AI 
hype is very tiresome but it's too good at this in particular. 
Try it:

1. https://docs.ollama.com/linux#manual-install
2. ollama pull qwen3-coder
3. ( echo "translate this to D:"; cat somefile.c ) | ollama run 
qwen3-coder


 I'm a fan of another relatively new technology that is yet to 
 become mainstream: the [Nix package manager](https://nixos.org).


Take a look at the latest thread in the LDC forum. I tried using 
Nix for cross-compilation and it impressed me even if it didn't 
work out for me.

Nix is also an interesting example of opt-in epochs.
Jan 28
parent reply monkyyy <crazymonkyyy gmail.com> writes:
On Wednesday, 28 January 2026 at 23:19:03 UTC, Julian Fondren 
wrote:

 
 1. https://docs.ollama.com/linux#manual-install
 2. ollama pull qwen3-coder
 3. ( echo "translate this to D:"; cat somefile.c ) | ollama run 
 qwen3-coder


are you successfully meta-meta-meta programming with ai? What you 
doing with it?
Jan 28
parent reply Julian Fondren <julian.fondren gmail.com> writes:
On Thursday, 29 January 2026 at 04:11:17 UTC, monkyyy wrote:

 On Wednesday, 28 January 2026 at 23:19:03 UTC, Julian Fondren 
 wrote:

 
 1. https://docs.ollama.com/linux#manual-install
 2. ollama pull qwen3-coder
 3. ( echo "translate this to D:"; cat somefile.c ) | ollama 
 run qwen3-coder


 are you successfully meta-meta-meta programming with ai? What 
 you doing with it?


No. I'm mostly using it as a search engine. Moments ago I added a 
key to my flash card program that adds the card as context to a 
quick question. Nothing special.

Fancy uses of AI remind me mostly of 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZuG9kUiRC_I - the episode of the 
Simpsons where Homer got so much into guns that he started trying 
to use his gun as a TV remote, as a way to turn off the lights, 
etc.
Jan 28
parent monkyyy <crazymonkyyy gmail.com> writes:
On Thursday, 29 January 2026 at 05:23:19 UTC, Julian Fondren 
wrote:

 Homer got so much into guns that he started trying to use his 
 gun as a TV remot


Id like to assure everyone Ive never overused anything
Jan 28