• Ecstatic Coder (62/62) Jun 22 2017 Following my previous post about showing to first-time visitors
• Cym13 (5/11) Jun 22 2017 Just so you know the current design was set less than a year ago
• Ecstatic Coder (1/5) Jun 22 2017 Indeed...
• ag0aep6g (8/14) Jun 22 2017 I think you'll have to elaborate on that. How is python.org "obviously"
• Ecstatic Coder (102/131) Jun 22 2017 First, please notice how simple the landing page is.
• ag0aep6g (15/39) Jun 22 2017 python.org's home page looks about as crowded to me as dlang.org's. How
• Ecstatic Coder (12/15) Jun 22 2017 On Linux Mint's software manager, about DMD, we can read :
• ag0aep6g (21/23) Jun 23 2017 Ok, I think I understand your goal now.
• Ecstatic Coder (2/25) Jun 23 2017 +1 :)
• Patrick Schluter (12/16) Jun 23 2017 In mine too.
• Ecstatic Coder (16/19) Jun 22 2017 IMHO, if dlang.org had more or less the same graphic design as
• Seb (6/14) Jun 23 2017 Huh? You were asked about concrete action points that in your PoV
• Ecstatic Coder (18/23) Jun 23 2017 Sorry I can't.
• cym13 (26/49) Jun 23 2017 Problem is, low profile programmers aren't the most interesting
• Ecstatic Coder (9/34) Jun 23 2017 Ok no problem, I understand your point :)
• Wulfklaue (29/37) Jun 23 2017 The issue goes a bit beyond just the marketing.
• Ecstatic Coder (12/40) Jun 23 2017 I completely agree with you !
• Wulfklaue (25/28) Jun 23 2017 Will not happen. I read too many threads already where this was
• Adam D. Ruppe (9/12) Jun 23 2017 I'm kinda tempted to offer a pre-packaged compiler download with
• Ecstatic Coder (11/19) Jun 23 2017 I'm also in favor that some of your personal developments be
• Adam D. Ruppe (16/18) Jun 24 2017 Eh, std libs is where you lose me. I don't mind offering a "just
• Laeeth Isharc (7/26) Jun 24 2017 what is the barest minimum we need to enable that?
• Adam D. Ruppe (19/20) Jun 24 2017 The phobos devs or the dmd packager just have to grab code and
• Ecstatic Coder (47/47) Jun 24 2017 Reading all the above posts on how to use vibe.d for a two line
• Ecstatic Coder (41/47) Jun 25 2017 Python language maintainers have a similar approach, and it pays
• Wulfklaue (68/75) Jun 26 2017 Remove Python from your link:
• Ecstatic Coder (14/14) Jun 26 2017 Thanks for having taken the time to write this very enlighting
• Martin Tschierschke (15/30) Jun 26 2017 I understand the frustration, brilliant language but not so well
• Wulfklaue (20/24) Jun 26 2017 A bit off-topic but what is going on with the students? I
• bachmeier (16/30) Jun 26 2017 Interesting that you bring that up. A couple of years ago we had
• Mike Parker (7/9) Jun 26 2017 Actually, they have one each: Walter's "Snowflake Strings" [1]
• bachmeier (5/14) Jun 26 2017 Sorry, I was a bit sloppy. I meant posts from the perspective of
• Seb (5/23) Jun 26 2017 They publish a high-level vision every six months (e.g.
• bachmeier (6/10) Jun 26 2017 As I recall, the hope was for communication more often than every
• jmh530 (5/15) Jun 26 2017 My sense is that communication is moving in the right direction.
• Wulfklaue (31/36) Jun 26 2017 I think you hit the nail on that head with that one. There is
• Ecstatic Coder (2/40) Jun 26 2017 +1
• bachmeier (6/11) Jun 26 2017 At the same time, this is the case for many languages. The
• Ecstatic Coder (38/57) Jun 24 2017 +1 :)
• =?UTF-8?Q?S=c3=b6nke_Ludwig?= (17/28) Jun 24 2017 /++ dub.sdl
• Ecstatic Coder (5/37) Jun 24 2017 Exactly what I mean.
• Adam D. Ruppe (7/9) Jun 24 2017 Or just leave it how it is and let it download the package
• Andrei Alexandrescu (2/38) Jun 24 2017 This should be a blog post. -- Andrei
• Wulfklaue (55/88) Jun 24 2017 No it does not...
• =?UTF-8?Q?S=c3=b6nke_Ludwig?= (7/29) Jun 24 2017 I've got to admit that I typed this from the top of my head without
• Wulfklaue (4/10) Jun 24 2017 Almost forgot to mention, this was done under Windows ( where the
• =?UTF-8?Q?S=c3=b6nke_Ludwig?= (3/12) Jun 25 2017 With inline, do you mean the embedded package recipe? Works for me on
• Wulfklaue (4/6) Jun 26 2017 Strange, colon was there. Did not work on Windows. Same error as
• Ecstatic Coder (3/9) Jun 26 2017 LOL
• =?UTF-8?Q?S=c3=b6nke_Ludwig?= (2/8) Jun 26 2017 Can you post the error message? I didn't use the Linux sub system.
• Wulfklaue (9/13) Jun 26 2017 From what i remember on my home system, the issue was it tried to
• =?UTF-8?Q?S=c3=b6nke_Ludwig?= (5/18) Jun 26 2017 Okay, thanks, that explains it. I didn't realize that I'm using DUB
• Wulfklaue (2/7) Jun 26 2017 Indeed, that works a lot better :)
• Timon Gehr (20/57) Jun 24 2017 $ cat main.d
• =?UTF-8?Q?S=c3=b6nke_Ludwig?= (3/7) Jun 24 2017 I forgot a colon at the end of the first line. With that it *actually*
• Timon Gehr (8/17) Jun 24 2017 $ dub main.d
• Wulfklaue (4/9) Jun 24 2017 You probably already have a server active on port 80. That is why
• Timon Gehr (3/15) Jun 24 2017 $ sudo netstat -tulpn | grep :80
• Adam D. Ruppe (4/5) Jun 24 2017 Listening on port 80 requires root anyway. That's why like my
• Timon Gehr (3/10) Jun 24 2017 Thanks! I guessed as much, but I don't have a setup where root can build...
• =?UTF-8?Q?S=c3=b6nke_Ludwig?= (4/15) Jun 28 2017 Usually I'd use 8080 for examples, but the original example used port
• Wulfklaue (20/49) Jun 24 2017 See the post above yours. Attempt 3:
• Adam D. Ruppe (27/34) Jun 24 2017 Fun fact: I actually do *not* have code that does that in one
• Martin Tschierschke (32/37) Jun 23 2017 [...]
• dlangPupil (27/31) Jun 26 2017 Although I am admittedly an LOB kind of person who cares little
• Ecstatic Coder (16/48) Jun 27 2017 I agree with you.
• Ecstatic Coder (9/14) Jun 28 2017 Within the next few months I'll try to find some free time to

Ecstatic Coder <ecstatic.coder gmail.com> writes:

Following my previous post about showing to first-time visitors 
of dlang.org some code example that shows how simpler the D code 
looks like compared to mainstream scripting and programming 
languages, is there any plan to change the design of the landing 
page any time soon ?

The current design may be fine to convincing C++ experts to 
switch to D, but I don't think it's that effective for less 
experienced programmers, looking for an alternative to 
JavaScript, Python or Ruby.

I'm a big fan of the python.org website, which is obviously 
targeted at inexperienced programmers.

I've personally taught imperative and object-oriented programming 
to my two teenager kids just with D and Coedit, and it really was 
the perfect beginner language.

D is powerful, indeed, but it's greatest quality is that it's 
easy to learn.

Sorry to come back with this sample, but the following code 
snippet is actually even simpler than what they were able to 
program after one week at one hour of training per day.

class TOTO
{
     bool IsCool;
     int Age;
     TUTU[] Tutus;
     TOTO[string] Totos;

     void Foo( TUTU tutu )
     {
         Tutus ~= tutu;
         Totos[ tutu.Name ] = tutu.Toto;
     }
}

class TUTU
{
     string Name;
     TOTO Toto;

     this( string name )
     {
         Name = name;
         Toto = new TOTO;
     }
}

void Bar(
     TOTO toto
     )
{
     toto.IsCool = !toto.IsCool;
}

void main()
{
     TUTU tutu;
     TOTO toto;

     tutu = new TUTU( "tutu" );

     toto = new TOTO;
     toto.Foo( tutu );
     toto.Bar();
}

I'm sure it's mainly because of D's elegant simplicity, even 
compared to JavaScript, Python, etc.

Selling D as a solid programming language for high performance 
development is obvious and natural, but I think that trying to 
make the website very appealing to inexperienced programmers as 
well could significantly broaden its user base.

Cym13 <cpicard openmailbox.org> writes:

On Thursday, 22 June 2017 at 19:19:20 UTC, Ecstatic Coder wrote:
 Following my previous post about showing to first-time visitors 
 of dlang.org some code example that shows how simpler the D 
 code looks like compared to mainstream scripting and 
 programming languages, is there any plan to change the design 
 of the landing page any time soon ?

 [...]

Just so you know the current design was set less than a year ago 
so while I'm in no position to say no change will happen this 
seems unlikely. But dlang.org is, like everything, open source so 
you could make a proposal.

Ecstatic Coder <ecstatic.coder gmail.com> writes:

 Just so you know the current design was set less than a year 
 ago so while I'm in no position to say no change will happen 
 this seems unlikely. But dlang.org is, like everything, open 
 source so you could make a proposal.

Indeed...

ag0aep6g <anonymous example.com> writes:

On 06/22/2017 09:19 PM, Ecstatic Coder wrote:
 The current design may be fine to convincing C++ experts to switch to D, 
 but I don't think it's that effective for less experienced programmers, 
 looking for an alternative to JavaScript, Python or Ruby.
 
 I'm a big fan of the python.org website, which is obviously targeted at 
 inexperienced programmers.

I think you'll have to elaborate on that. How is python.org "obviously" 
targeted at inexperienced programmers and dlang.org isn't? The home 
pages look rather similar to me: menu, search box, code sample, sales 
pitch, those text boxes with icons, etc.

What would you change on dlang.org? Completely overhaul everything, or 
just adjust the wording and other details to be more targeted at newbie 
programmers?

Ecstatic Coder <ecstatic.coder gmail.com> writes:

 I think you'll have to elaborate on that. How is python.org 
 "obviously" targeted at inexperienced programmers and dlang.org 
 isn't? The home pages look rather similar to me: menu, search 
 box, code sample, sales pitch, those text boxes with icons, etc.

 What would you change on dlang.org? Completely overhaul 
 everything, or just adjust the wording and other details to be 
 more targeted at newbie programmers?

First, please notice how simple the landing page is.

Its nice visual design exhibits simplicity, and obvioulsy uses a 
few text as possible to convey the message.

I've recently studied web development for two years, and believe 
me, while not perfect, this landing page clearly matches many of 
the requirements we were taught.

And about the advertising target, the first text paragraph block 
below the code carousel you will read is :

"Get Started

Whether you're new to programming or an experienced developer, 
it's easy to learn and use Python.

Start with our Beginner’s Guide"

Pretty self-explanatory :)

It's actually the same message than in the code carousel, at 
slide 4 :

"Quick & Easy to Learn

Experienced programmers in any other language can pick up Python 
very quickly, and beginners find the clean syntax and indentation 
structure easy to learn. Whet your appetite with our Python 3 
overview."

I would summarize their moto as :

1/ Python is a scripting language that gets the job done quickly 
("Python is a programming language that lets you work quickly and 
integrate systems more effectively.")

2/ Python is very easy to learn, not only for experienced 
developers, but also for beginners ("Whether you're new to 
programming or an experienced developer, it's easy to learn and 
use Python.")

And look at the code snippets on the five slides of the carousel.

* First sample code :


 def fib(n):
     a, b = 0, 1
     while a < n:
         print(a, end=' ')
         a, b = b, a+b
     print()
 fib(1000)




* Second sample code :


 fruits = ['Banana', 'Apple', 'Lime']
 loud_fruits = [fruit.upper() for fruit in fruits]
 print(loud_fruits)



['BANANA', 'APPLE', 'LIME']


 list(enumerate(fruits))



[(0, 'Banana'), (1, 'Apple'), (2, 'Lime')]


* Third sample code :


 1 / 2



0.5
 2 ** 3



8




5.666666666666667




5


* Fourth sample code :


 print("Hello, I'm Python!")



Hello, I'm Python!


 name = input('What is your name?\n')
 print('Hi, %s.' % name)



What is your name?
Python
Hi, Python.


* Fifth sample code :


 numbers = [2, 4, 6, 8]
 product = 1
 for number in numbers:



...    product = product * number
...
 print('The product is:', product)



The product is: 384


These code snippets are very very simple !!! Almost baby code ;)

It seems pretty obvious to me that Python's code carousel targets 
beginner programmers, showing them simple code that they will 
easily understand.

This website is very effective at convincing people that learning 
to program in Python won't require much efforts, even if you are 
new to programming.

And I think that this message alone could be one of key reasons 
which explain Python is so popular, among others...

And when I say popular, I mean it.


(https://www.tiobe.com/tiobe-index) :

1. Java
2. C
3. C++
4. Python

6. VB .NET
7. JavaScript
8. PHP
...


(http://langpop.corger.nl) :

1. JavaScript
2. Java
3. PHP
4. Python

6. C++
...


(http://redmonk.com/sogrady/2017/03/17/language-rankings-1-17) :

1. JavaScript
2. Java
3. Python
4. PHP

6. C++
...

What makes me sad with the above rankings, whether you trust them 
or not, is that I've actually used Python, Ruby and JavaScript in 
the past, and for the kind of file processing scripts and tools I 
develop, I can tell you that D is WAY better !!!

But almost nobody knows it.

And I don't think that the current website is effective at all in 
convincing people that D is indeed a better alternative to 
scripting languages like Python, Ruby or JavaScript, despite it 
really is.

ag0aep6g <anonymous example.com> writes:

On 06/23/2017 07:13 AM, Ecstatic Coder wrote:
 I think you'll have to elaborate on that. How is python.org 
 "obviously" targeted at inexperienced programmers and dlang.org isn't? 
 The home pages look rather similar to me: menu, search box, code 
 sample, sales pitch, those text boxes with icons, etc.

 What would you change on dlang.org? Completely overhaul everything, or 
 just adjust the wording and other details to be more targeted at 
 newbie programmers?

 
 First, please notice how simple the landing page is.

python.org's home page looks about as crowded to me as dlang.org's. How 
is it significantly more simple?

 Its nice visual design exhibits simplicity, and obvioulsy uses a few 
 text as possible to convey the message.

So you'd like to make dlang.org prettier and less wordy?

 I've recently studied web development for two years, and believe me, 
 while not perfect, this landing page clearly matches many of the 
 requirements we were taught.

Aside: Whenever someone says "believe me" that's a sign for me to be 
skeptical towards their claims.

How does dlang.org's home page not match the requirements you were taught?

My questions are not rhetorical. I'm trying to find out where you see 
problems and how you'd like to see them fixed.

[...]
 And look at the code snippets on the five slides of the carousel.

[...]
 These code snippets are very very simple !!! Almost baby code ;)
 
 It seems pretty obvious to me that Python's code carousel targets 
 beginner programmers, showing them simple code that they will easily 
 understand.

So you'd like to see simpler code samples on dlang.org?

[...]
 And I don't think that the current website is effective at all in 
 convincing people that D is indeed a better alternative to scripting 
 languages like Python, Ruby or JavaScript, despite it really is.

You talked about how python.org is good, but what is bad on dlang.org? 
How does it fail where python.org succeeds, and how do we fix it?

Ecstatic Coder <ecstatic.coder gmail.com> writes:

 You talked about how python.org is good, but what is bad on 
 dlang.org? How does it fail where python.org succeeds, and how 
 do we fix it?

On Linux Mint's software manager, about DMD, we can read :

"D is a systems programming language. Its focus is on combining 
the power and high performance of C and C++ with the programmer 
productivity of modern languages like Ruby and Python."

So I'm not saying that dlang.org is bad.

I'm just saying that :
1/ it's not especially obvious that D is also an easy to learn 
scripting language.
2/ I think that python.org's website is quite efficient at 
convincing people that it could be worth giving it a try.

But maybe dlang.org's current design is much better according to 
how you want it to be perceived.

ag0aep6g <anonymous example.com> writes:

On 06/23/2017 08:49 AM, Ecstatic Coder wrote:
 1/ it's not especially obvious that D is also an easy to learn scripting 
 language.

Ok, I think I understand your goal now.

There's a thing that I'd like to change on the home page, and I think it 
aligns with your thoughts: "D is a systems programming language" -> "D 
is a general-purpose programming language".

"Systems programming" puts the focus on the low-level side of D, which 
may not even be its strong side (yet) if one looks at the recent 
-betterC efforts.

"Systems programming" may scare users away who think they're not good 
enough for that kind of programming.

"General-purpose programming" is a better fit, in my opinion.

Regarding the examples, I'd prefer very simple ones, too. Hello World, 
99 Bottles of Beer -- stuff like that. I think there's the idea that 
examples should show some cool feature of D, but I'd say they should 
just show how D looks with easy-to-follow code. Maybe have a distinct 
page with cooler examples.

So, overall, I think dlang.org could be tweaked to be more directed at 
newbie programmers, and I wouldn't mind that. I don't think it would 
need a major overhaul of the site; just some tweaks. But personally, I'm 
not really interested in the marketing of D, so I'm not going to push 
for these things.

Ecstatic Coder <ecstatic.coder gmail.com> writes:

On Friday, 23 June 2017 at 13:43:00 UTC, ag0aep6g wrote:
 On 06/23/2017 08:49 AM, Ecstatic Coder wrote:
 1/ it's not especially obvious that D is also an easy to learn 
 scripting language.

 Ok, I think I understand your goal now.

 There's a thing that I'd like to change on the home page, and I 
 think it aligns with your thoughts: "D is a systems programming 
 language" -> "D is a general-purpose programming language".

 "Systems programming" puts the focus on the low-level side of 
 D, which may not even be its strong side (yet) if one looks at 
 the recent -betterC efforts.

 "Systems programming" may scare users away who think they're 
 not good enough for that kind of programming.

 "General-purpose programming" is a better fit, in my opinion.

 Regarding the examples, I'd prefer very simple ones, too. Hello 
 World, 99 Bottles of Beer -- stuff like that. I think there's 
 the idea that examples should show some cool feature of D, but 
 I'd say they should just show how D looks with easy-to-follow 
 code. Maybe have a distinct page with cooler examples.

 So, overall, I think dlang.org could be tweaked to be more 
 directed at newbie programmers, and I wouldn't mind that. I 
 don't think it would need a major overhaul of the site; just 
 some tweaks. But personally, I'm not really interested in the 
 marketing of D, so I'm not going to push for these things.

+1 :)

Patrick Schluter <Patrick.Schluter bbox.fr> writes:

On Friday, 23 June 2017 at 13:43:00 UTC, ag0aep6g wrote:
 On 06/23/2017 08:49 AM, Ecstatic Coder wrote:

 "Systems programming" may scare users away who think they're 
 not good enough for that kind of programming.

True.

 "General-purpose programming" is a better fit, in my opinion.

In mine too.

What does system porgramming even mean? System without qualifier 
is as wobbly a term as thing or stuff. System as in operating 
system, or system as desktop system, or dabase system or web 
system or, you get the idea, everything can be called a system.
Furthermore, as operating system language, D is not even that 
appropriate as it requires really a lot from the platform it's 
implemented in: >=32bits, stack, memory protection (or else no 
TLS), etc.

So calling it General-purpose is really something to get behind.

Ecstatic Coder <ecstatic.coder gmail.com> writes:

 What would you change on dlang.org? Completely overhaul 
 everything, or just adjust the wording and other details to be 
 more targeted at newbie programmers?

IMHO, if dlang.org had more or less the same graphic design as 
python.org, the text blocks under the code carousel should be 
reduced to just what is required to convince people that D :

1. is a great scripting language, very simple to learn and even 
more productive than Python or JavaScript.
2. is a great programming language, delivering high performance 
applications with a better expressivity than C++.
3. is easy to download, install and get started.
4. has great documentations and a lot of tutorials, both for 
inexperienced and experienced programmers who want to quickly 
start developing scripts or GUI applications.

I know that when I carefully read the current dlang.org page, I 
can get this information.

It's just that I think that python.org is more effective at 
conveying their main messages with much less text.

For more details, you are invited to click on the links.

Seb <seb wilzba.ch> writes:

On Friday, 23 June 2017 at 06:15:46 UTC, Ecstatic Coder wrote:
 What would you change on dlang.org? Completely overhaul 
 everything, or just adjust the wording and other details to be 
 more targeted at newbie programmers?

 IMHO, if dlang.org had more or less the same graphic design as 
 python.org, the text blocks under the code carousel should be 
 reduced to just what is required to convince people that D :
 ...
 For more details, you are invited to click on the links.

Huh? You were asked about concrete action points that in your PoV 
would improve dlang.org. You can't just say "make it (like) 
python.org" ;-)
Could you maybe try to be a bit preciser and create a more 
detailed lists of points on how you would improve dlang.org?

Ecstatic Coder <ecstatic.coder gmail.com> writes:

 Huh? You were asked about concrete action points that in your 
 PoV would improve dlang.org. You can't just say "make it (like) 
 python.org" ;-)
 Could you maybe try to be a bit preciser and create a more 
 detailed lists of points on how you would improve dlang.org?

Sorry I can't.

Make it look more like "python.org" is just and exactly what I 
mean.

For instance, D is the only scripting language I would use 
nowadays.

BUT I would not take the risk to use D instead of C++ to develop 
games for instance.

D is actually quite easy to sell a scripting language.


another thing.

In my personal case, selling D as a better alternative to Python, 
JavaScript or Ruby would have just needed a well chosen snippet 
of simple code, which shows me that indeed D is some kind of 
strongly-typed JavaScript, à la TypeScript, which is both easy to 
learn and use.

And I believe that "python.org" is currently more convincing for 
"low-profile" programmers/scripters than "dlang.org".

Just look at the code snippets...

cym13 <cpicard openmailbox.org> writes:

On Friday, 23 June 2017 at 07:44:36 UTC, Ecstatic Coder wrote:
 Huh? You were asked about concrete action points that in your 
 PoV would improve dlang.org. You can't just say "make it 
 (like) python.org" ;-)
 Could you maybe try to be a bit preciser and create a more 
 detailed lists of points on how you would improve dlang.org?

 Sorry I can't.

 Make it look more like "python.org" is just and exactly what I 
 mean.

 For instance, D is the only scripting language I would use 
 nowadays.

 BUT I would not take the risk to use D instead of C++ to 
 develop games for instance.

 D is actually quite easy to sell a scripting language.


 another thing.

 In my personal case, selling D as a better alternative to 
 Python, JavaScript or Ruby would have just needed a well chosen 
 snippet of simple code, which shows me that indeed D is some 
 kind of strongly-typed JavaScript, à la TypeScript, which is 
 both easy to learn and use.

 And I believe that "python.org" is currently more convincing 
 for "low-profile" programmers/scripters than "dlang.org".

 Just look at the code snippets...

Problem is, low profile programmers aren't the most interesting 
target for D right now. You have to choose your battles and I 
believe that isn't done enough in D marketing. For example we 
have lots of issues promoting the GC because we want to attract 
people that like that kind of memory management and at the same 
time people that don't. So we end up saying "yeah, we have a GC, 
but you can do things without it" and the same question comes 
over and over again "make up your mind, is it possible or not to 
code in D without GC?".

Right now the marketing targets companies and C++ programmers. 
Maybe that's not the way to go but it's the path that was choosen 
until now. To those programmers the message our marketing tries 
to send is "D is a serious, solid language that gives you the 
power to build industry software". It's all about being a rock: 
solid, sturdy, there to stay for years to come. Of course on side 
channels we talk about it being also a good scripting language 
etc, but that's not the main image. An image of scripting 
language is likely to make D loose most of its credibility 
amongst C++ groups (I may be wrong about it but it's the 
impression I get).

What you're proposing is way more than a website modification, 
it's a profound marketting change. Maybe it's the right way to 
go, but if that's what you want you may want to rethink your 
whole approach with the fact that it's not about dlang.org's 
cosmetic anymore.

Ecstatic Coder <ecstatic.coder gmail.com> writes:

 Problem is, low profile programmers aren't the most interesting 
 target for D right now. You have to choose your battles and I 
 believe that isn't done enough in D marketing. For example we 
 have lots of issues promoting the GC because we want to attract 
 people that like that kind of memory management and at the same 
 time people that don't. So we end up saying "yeah, we have a 
 GC, but you can do things without it" and the same question 
 comes over and over again "make up your mind, is it possible or 
 not to code in D without GC?".

 Right now the marketing targets companies and C++ programmers. 
 Maybe that's not the way to go but it's the path that was 
 choosen until now. To those programmers the message our 
 marketing tries to send is "D is a serious, solid language that 
 gives you the power to build industry software". It's all about 
 being a rock: solid, sturdy, there to stay for years to come. 
 Of course on side channels we talk about it being also a good 
 scripting language etc, but that's not the main image. An image 
 of scripting language is likely to make D loose most of its 
 credibility amongst C++ groups (I may be wrong about it but 
 it's the impression I get).

 What you're proposing is way more than a website modification, 
 it's a profound marketting change. Maybe it's the right way to 
 go, but if that's what you want you may want to rethink your 
 whole approach with the fact that it's not about dlang.org's 
 cosmetic anymore.

Ok no problem, I understand your point :)

Indeed the current website conveys quite well the "serious 
C++-like language for the software industry" concept.

Unfortunately it's not an easy task to convince people to use D 


There are much more risks involved in deciding to adopt a new 
language when it's for people's core business.

Same reasons why I'm still using C++ and Go professionally btw, 
and I'm sorry for that...

Wulfklaue <wulfklaue wulfklaue.com> writes:

On Friday, 23 June 2017 at 09:02:30 UTC, Ecstatic Coder wrote:
 Indeed the current website conveys quite well the "serious 
 C++-like language for the software industry" concept.

 Unfortunately it's not an easy task to convince people to use D 


 There are much more risks involved in deciding to adopt a new 
 language when it's for people's core business.

 Same reasons why I'm still using C++ and Go professionally btw, 
 and I'm sorry for that...

The issue goes a bit beyond just the marketing.

Somebody posted on Reddit a few days ago, that D can be used for 
a lot of different fields. From system programming to web 
development etc ... But the reality is a bit different.

If you want web development you need to write your own framework 
or rely on 3th party solutions like vibe.d ( that means you 
actually need to discover about vibe.d ).

While D is a perfectly capable language that is useful for low 
profile programmers. Any PHP developer can work with D language 
easily, its things that are not the language is where it gets 
troublesome.

Case and point:

You can install Go and get a HTTP server up and going withing a 
few minutes.

D can not do the same ( even with vibe.d ). Third party packages 
require knowing about dub. It requires knowing about the package 
system. It takes more steps then Go.

It actually requires some major commitment to D for people to 
learn the surrounding tools, 3th party solutions, finding a 
proper working editor ( if you want all the bells )  etc.

I understand your point but there seems to be no real support 
among the current D developers / users. Unless you consider the 
"write it yourself" as support. ;)

D can get much more "low profile programmers". But we need to 
differ between the language and the actual eco system. And its 
the eco system that has the bigger learning curve to get into D, 
especially when people are coming with a PHP/Python/Ruby 
background.

Ecstatic Coder <ecstatic.coder gmail.com> writes:

 The issue goes a bit beyond just the marketing.

 Somebody posted on Reddit a few days ago, that D can be used 
 for a lot of different fields. From system programming to web 
 development etc ... But the reality is a bit different.

 If you want web development you need to write your own 
 framework or rely on 3th party solutions like vibe.d ( that 
 means you actually need to discover about vibe.d ).

 While D is a perfectly capable language that is useful for low 
 profile programmers. Any PHP developer can work with D language 
 easily, its things that are not the language is where it gets 
 troublesome.

 Case and point:

 You can install Go and get a HTTP server up and going withing a 
 few minutes.

 D can not do the same ( even with vibe.d ). Third party 
 packages require knowing about dub. It requires knowing about 
 the package system. It takes more steps then Go.

 It actually requires some major commitment to D for people to 
 learn the surrounding tools, 3th party solutions, finding a 
 proper working editor ( if you want all the bells )  etc.

 I understand your point but there seems to be no real support 
 among the current D developers / users. Unless you consider the 
 "write it yourself" as support. ;)

 D can get much more "low profile programmers". But we need to 
 differ between the language and the actual eco system. And its 
 the eco system that has the bigger learning curve to get into 
 D, especially when people are coming with a PHP/Python/Ruby 
 background.

I completely agree with you !

Most JS/PHP programmers should immediately feel at home when 
starting to use D.

And right out of the box, D is fully equiped to develop Perl-like 
file processing scripts, there is nothing more to download or 
install to get started.

But for the remaining, unfortunately this is not as easy, and 
this requires some efforts before being able to develop web or 
GUI applications.

That's why I'm in favor of adapting some thirdparty librairies so 
they become pre-installed standard librairies (std.web, std.ui, 
etc).

Wulfklaue <wulfklaue wulfklaue.com> writes:

On Friday, 23 June 2017 at 13:29:29 UTC, Ecstatic Coder wrote:
 That's why I'm in favor of adapting some thirdparty librairies 
 so they become pre-installed standard librairies (std.web, 
 std.ui, etc).

Will not happen. I read too many threads already where this was 
mentioned and it always got shot down. From coding styles, to 
maintainers etc ...

I have always been a believer that a good system has the most 
used technology as its core library, so the developers are sure 
that this tech will be supported. But between believing in 
something and reality, there are major differences.

Lets assume vibe.d does not get supported anymore or simply 
updates take longer and longer. When its a 3th party library, one 
can kick and scream but nothing will change this. As a core 
library, you expect there to be is a sense of responsibility and 
also more usage, that can justify having more maintainers.

But one only need to look at the std.xml library. And the 
std.experimental modules that got stuck there for years ( what 
demotivates the developers ).

The issue is and will always be that 3th party modules are more 
in danger that the main developer will lose interest or has too 
much work in his private life. Unfortunately, D has only so may 
core developers so you have the same issue on the std library.

Maybe i am the crazy guy but i prefer to write my own 
functionality. Maybe take inspiration from how other people solve 
the issues but only focusing on what i need. Its not efficient 
but it bypasses the whole 3th party issue. One does not need to 
learn a new style, you know the code in and out ...

Adam D. Ruppe <destructionator gmail.com> writes:

On Friday, 23 June 2017 at 13:29:29 UTC, Ecstatic Coder wrote:
 But for the remaining, unfortunately this is not as easy, and 
 this requires some efforts before being able to develop web or 
 GUI applications.

I'm kinda tempted to offer a pre-packaged compiler download with 
my libs and some other useful stuff. PHP has done that before, 
with the LAMP packages.

And now that dmd is fully Boost, there's no legal barrier, but I 
question if it is really worth it because someone could just 
download the files themselves easily enough.

But still, the compiler+libs+samples and docs and maybe one of 
the ides could be kinda useful.

Ecstatic Coder <ecstatic.coder gmail.com> writes:

 I'm kinda tempted to offer a pre-packaged compiler download 
 with my libs and some other useful stuff. PHP has done that 
 before, with the LAMP packages.

 And now that dmd is fully Boost, there's no legal barrier, but 
 I question if it is really worth it because someone could just 
 download the files themselves easily enough.

 But still, the compiler+libs+samples and docs and maybe one of 
 the ides could be kinda useful.

I'm also in favor that some of your personal developments be 
converted into std libs.

For instance, being able to natively implement a small web server 
with a few lines of standard code, like we can easily do in Go or 
Node.js, would be great.

And I know that you already have implemented that :)

So I can't talk for everybody, but I can at least say that having 
such stuff working out of the box would indeed make a huge 
difference for newbies like me, who'd prefer not having to chase 
for open source code which does what the std libraries provide in 
other languages.

Adam D. Ruppe <destructionator gmail.com> writes:

On Friday, 23 June 2017 at 18:26:43 UTC, Ecstatic Coder wrote:
 I'm also in favor that some of your personal developments be 
 converted into std libs.

Eh, std libs is where you lose me. I don't mind offering a "just 
works" dmd download on my website, with my packaging dmd for some 
particular purposes, or on the official site, that includes all 
the stuff. But I have no interest in being part of Phobos and 
losing control of my projects.

Now, I think Phobos should be open to those things, where the 
modules are owned by third parties and just packaged as a 
standard library. The phobos devs might fork it or whatever, of 
course, but this would be more like a Linux distribution than a 
corporate merger - the individual packages in a Linux distro are 
still owned by outside parties, and the distro maintainers just 
bring them in and might slightly modify them to fit their thing 
better.

 From the user side, it looks like a traditional std lib, but from 
the developer side, it is more of a bazaar than a cathedral.

Laeeth Isharc <laeethnospam nospam.laeeth.com> writes:

On Saturday, 24 June 2017 at 18:10:54 UTC, Adam D. Ruppe wrote:
 On Friday, 23 June 2017 at 18:26:43 UTC, Ecstatic Coder wrote:
 I'm also in favor that some of your personal developments be 
 converted into std libs.

 Eh, std libs is where you lose me. I don't mind offering a 
 "just works" dmd download on my website, with my packaging dmd 
 for some particular purposes, or on the official site, that 
 includes all the stuff. But I have no interest in being part of 
 Phobos and losing control of my projects.

 Now, I think Phobos should be open to those things, where the 
 modules are owned by third parties and just packaged as a 
 standard library. The phobos devs might fork it or whatever, of 
 course, but this would be more like a Linux distribution than a 
 corporate merger - the individual packages in a Linux distro 
 are still owned by outside parties, and the distro maintainers 
 just bring them in and might slightly modify them to fit their 
 thing better.

 From the user side, it looks like a traditional std lib, but 
 from the developer side, it is more of a bazaar than a 
 cathedral.

what is the barest minimum we need to enable that?

someone to organise conventions about module organisation and 
some kind of package grouping in dub?  so you can specify 
"adamandfriends" as a dependency to bring in the repackaged 
library under that group name?  like yum groupinstall 'blahblah' 
but more personal.

Adam D. Ruppe <destructionator gmail.com> writes:

On Saturday, 24 June 2017 at 18:17:42 UTC, Laeeth Isharc wrote:
 what is the barest minimum we need to enable that?

The phobos devs or the dmd packager just have to grab code and 
docs they are interested in. It's open source; the author has 
already made it available. Drop it in the default import and lib 
paths and run.

It doesn't have to be a whole production.


Alternatively, we could beef up the code.dlang.org website to 
feature the most useful libraries and do some kind of automatic 
curation and evaluation coupled with nice presentation and search 
there.

(or both)

I have some ideas for code.dlang.org and emailed them during the 
google summer of code process last time, and have even considered 
doing it myself, but I don't really have time for it right now...

But even basic stuff like taking the download count (available on 
the existing dub rest api) and using it to weigh in some ranking 
algorithm might help, and showing more info about subpackages and 
documentation would definitely be nice, and encourage users to 
add tutorials to the site and get them searchable.

Ecstatic Coder <ecstatic.coder gmail.com> writes:

Reading all the above posts on how to use vibe.d for a two line 
web server was very interesting.

I still think that it's more simple to do it with Go and with D, 
but I may be wrong, as I'm currently using Go for web 
development, and not D, for the reasons above.

And I see that not many people on this forum don't think that D 
could improve its popularity if :

1/ it was promoted as :

    a/ a great scripting language for scripters and learners 
looking for an easy to learn and to use typescript-like scripting 
language (which it is)

    b/ a solid general purpose programming language for the 
software industry, already equipped for web and desktop 
application development.

2/ existing web-related D code was refactored to provide the few 
Go-like functions just enough to serve static files, process an 
URL and send back pages/data to the browser, so we can "natively" 
use D for web application development.

3/ any existing GUI library was pre-installed (i.e. imports 
renamed to "std.*") so that we can also "natively" use D for 
desktop application development.

I may be wrong, but I think that refactoring an existing web 
library, renaming the imports of an existing GUI library, and 
making a few "marketing" changes to the D web site to make it 
more beginner-friendly would not require much man-power, while 
this may have the potential to make a HUGE impact on how D is 
actually PERCEIVED.

And I clearly see that many software development experts on this 
forum don't see any interest in those suggestions, which I 
perfectly understand, as we can get the job done with dub, and 
all the required information can be found on the existing website 
anyway.

But for less-skilled developers and scripters who didn't 
graduated from the University (like me), these tiny and seemingly 
insignificant details are often those which will actually make 
the difference between something they will use, because it seems 
really easy to learn and use, and something which doesn't seem 
good for them, because it looks a bit too complicated to learn or 
use.

For instance, in my case, I must say that I actually wasn't 
convinced at all by the current website, which is why I have 
tried several other general purpose scripting/programming 
languages (Python, Ruby, Node.js, Nim, etc) before finally trying 
D, when I was actually lacking other options.

Now I'm happy to have made that last effort, as D has now become 
my favorite programming language, but maybe other people have had 
the same experience as me, and didn't try it at all eventually...

Ecstatic Coder <ecstatic.coder gmail.com> writes:

 I may be wrong, but I think that refactoring an existing web 
 library, renaming the imports of an existing GUI library, and 
 making a few "marketing" changes to the D web site to make it 
 more beginner-friendly would not require much man-power, while 
 this may have the potential to make a HUGE impact on how D is 
 actually PERCEIVED.

Python language maintainers have a similar approach, and it pays 
off...

If you look at the PYPL page (http://pypl.github.io/PYPL.html), 
you will read this :

"Worldwide, Java is the most popular language, Python grew the 
most in the last 5 years (8.7%) and PHP lost the most (-5.0%)"

Here is what Dlang's official blog says about Python :

"On the author’s MacBook Pro, the Python version takes 12.6 
seconds, the D program takes 3.2 seconds. This makes sense as the 
D program is compiled to native code. But suppose we run the 
Python program with PyPy, a just-in-time Python compiler? This 
gives a result of 2.4 seconds, actually beating the D program, 
with no changes to the Python code."

(https://dlang.org/blog/2017/05/24/faster-command-line-tools-in-d/)

So actually it can even run faster than D, without any 
significant optimization...

For those still not convinced, I suggest they compare the 
popularity of D, Kotlin, Golang and Python on Google trends :

https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?q=dlang,kotlin,golang,python
https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?q=dlang%20language,kotlin%20language,golang%20language,python%20language

The green line kilometers high above the ground this Python, 
whose I praised the website.

The red line is Kotlin. While available since only a few months, 
it is already competing with Go's orange line in terms of 
popularity.

Btw their first example is a "Hello World", in different versions.

And the completely flat blue line below all the three other 
curves, which desperately looks like the electrocardiogram of a 
dead heart, it is D's current popularity (or relative 
unpopularity should I say) in Google searches.

QED...

Anyway, it seems that not many people on this forum see any 
interest in improving D's popularity on the web with just a few 
cheap cosmetic changes to better align it with contenders like 
Python or Go, so I will bothered people with unwanted advices.

Instead, may I suggest that we dig the grave deeper by putting 
even more complicated examples on D's code roulette so that we 
make sure that only the elite of programming could remain 
interested in using this language ?

Whoops, sorry, this is already done at the moment actually. Ok, 
then I said nothing... LOL

Wulfklaue <wulfklaue wulfklaue.com> writes:

On Monday, 26 June 2017 at 05:10:34 UTC, Ecstatic Coder wrote:
 Anyway, it seems that not many people on this forum see any 
 interest in improving D's popularity on the web with just a few 
 cheap cosmetic changes to better align it with contenders like 
 Python or Go, so I will bothered people with unwanted advices.

Remove Python from your link:

https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?q=dlang,kotlin,golang

D does not even register beyond 1, even without python disrupting 
the whole scale line.

 Whoops, sorry, this is already done at the moment actually. Ok, 
 then I said nothing... LOL

I know how you feel but trust me that trying to fight this seems 
to be a fight you will not win.

If there is something very clear about the D community, its comes 
mostly down to this:

* If you want something done, do it yourself
* If you want something done, pay for it
* If its a massive obvious flaw, maybe somebody will fix it

D with some help can become a much more general accepted 
programming language that is not just a C++ replacement language. 
The D language as i stated before is not the problem. Its mostly 
what is around the language, is where D falls short.

But fixing those issues tend to be:

* Repetitive work, nobody like doing that
* None glorious work.

In other words, not a big project where somebody can put there 
own stamp upon it. This seems to be one of the major issues. A 
lot of brilliant people but very few that want to do the grunt 
work.

Frankly, there are moments that i wanted to do some of the grunt 
work but the same issue as everybody else. No time to spend hours 
and hours into fixing things ( and some of the issues that needs 
to be fixed can be weeks or months of work unfortunately ).

This is why i personally think the only way to "solve" these 
issues, is if D hires people that work full time on these issues. 
And that in return needs money.

And then we come back to the same sticky point. Why are very few 
people donating? Maybe its just from my perspective but when i 
donate, i want to feel that my money will be used good. And 
because there is no real public accounting on where the money 
that D gets is being spend, ... maybe there is but again, it 
feels like you need to dig to find it, like with most D things.

---

Saturday i spend some time with Kotlin. And frankly, i liked it 
more then i expected.

Install jetbrains community edition, install JVM. And your ready 
to rock.

* Front end writing / Javascript generation. Works out of the box.

* Java generation / writing. Fast, works perfectly.

* Great editor support! I just love the whole "rust" style 
mutable recognition build in. The extra type hinting. The ability 
to alter the coding formatting. Etc ... and all in the familiar 
editor then i am used to from my php days.

* Kotlin Native (llvm). A bit more work to get going but its only 
at 0.3 version so one gives it some slack. But they did 
impressive work in the last two months from the initial release. 
Hell, they even beat Swift by offering Windows support already 
*lol*

---

While i am sure there are javascript converting modules for D. 
Again ... no focus on it, 3th party, no clear information etc ...

When it comes down to editor support, sorry its mediocre at best. 
Here are work i am fighting the workspace-d dfmt simply because i 
have some long shell lines that i want on a single line. They are 
 120 characters but dfmt keeps breaking my line formatting. 

Frustrating because it looks bad and because dfmt is compiled 
into workspace-d, no documentation how to override dfmt. Again, 
it feel like a lot of modules slapped together and they work but 
no steps beyond this.

...

I am at work so i do not have a lot of time to write all this. D 
simply feels incomplete compared to its competitors. Not the 
language, that is great and really feature complete. But 
everything around it feels fragmented, incomplete, in a constant 
state of unfinished. That is just my opinion.

Ecstatic Coder <ecstatic.coder gmail.com> writes:

Thanks for having taken the time to write this very enlighting 
post.

I think this is a very pragmatic analysis of the main roots of 
the problem, which clearly explains why D remains much less 
popular than Go, Python, Kotlin, etc despite the language itself 
is at least as modern and convenient (and even more IMHO).

I don't think the situation will change any time soon, so I feel 
exactly in the same mood as you.

Hence my suggession to simply make a few "cosmetic" changes to 
change D's perception on the web, to compensate for the lack of 
money and manpower.

But they won't probably be applied.

And I know that for the "do it yourself" I'm probably part of the 
problem...

Martin Tschierschke <mt smartdolphin.de> writes:

On Monday, 26 June 2017 at 08:47:46 UTC, Ecstatic Coder wrote:
 Thanks for having taken the time to write this very enlighting 
 post.

 I think this is a very pragmatic analysis of the main roots of 
 the problem, which clearly explains why D remains much less 
 popular than Go, Python, Kotlin, etc despite the language 
 itself is at least as modern and convenient (and even more 
 IMHO).

 I don't think the situation will change any time soon, so I 
 feel exactly in the same mood as you.

 Hence my suggession to simply make a few "cosmetic" changes to 
 change D's perception on the web, to compensate for the lack of 
 money and manpower.

 But they won't probably be applied.

 And I know that for the "do it yourself" I'm probably part of 
 the problem...

I understand the frustration, brilliant language but not so well 
designed ecosystem around.
Please be aware, that even the setup of the D Foundation is still 
work in progress. So we are still waiting for the foundation to 
offer some kind of supporting memberships.

But as Andrei A. told us on DConf, the foundation already is 
paying some students (a small salary) for their work. So best 
thing we can do is to push the D Foundation (Andrei+Walter) to 
optimize the support structure.

The good thing behind these obvious missing parts is, that there 
is a strong focus on the language itself, so I am convinced, that 
D is here to stay, so that every effort in learning the language 
is a well made investment.

Regards mt. (still a bloody beginner, started with D Nov. 2015)

Wulfklaue <wulfklaue wulfklaue.com> writes:

On Monday, 26 June 2017 at 09:26:01 UTC, Martin Tschierschke 
wrote:
 But as Andrei A. told us on DConf, the foundation already is 
 paying some students (a small salary) for their work. So best 
 thing we can do is to push the D Foundation (Andrei+Walter) to 
 optimize the support structure.

A bit off-topic but what is going on with the students? I 
remember there are 3 students hired and one of them was at the D 
conference a while ago, talking about optimizing the D runtime. 
But has anybody read anything what is going on beyond this? Or 
even is there any progress?

Communications. Another point to add to the complained list *lol*.

At my work here, we have weekly status updates where the project 
leader writes down:

* x person is working on y.
* x task has been finished.
* y is proposed.

It saves on a lot of time because we do not need to repeat what 
we are working on to each boss / college.

Sometimes i think that Walter and Andrei are probably also tired 
of explaining the same thing over and over again. The issue being 
that a forum simply eats information and unless you read each and 
every thread, you will always miss (potentially) important or 
interesting information.

bachmeier <no spam.net> writes:

On Monday, 26 June 2017 at 09:45:46 UTC, Wulfklaue wrote:
 Communications. Another point to add to the complained list 
 *lol*.

 At my work here, we have weekly status updates where the 
 project leader writes down:

 * x person is working on y.
 * x task has been finished.
 * y is proposed.

 It saves on a lot of time because we do not need to repeat what 
 we are working on to each boss / college.

 Sometimes i think that Walter and Andrei are probably also 
 tired of explaining the same thing over and over again. The 
 issue being that a forum simply eats information and unless you 
 read each and every thread, you will always miss (potentially) 
 important or interesting information.

Interesting that you bring that up. A couple of years ago we had 
a discussion about the need to improve communication. We said D 
needed a blog to better communicate what is going on. Now we have 
one, and by my count, the number of posts from Walter and Andrei 
are zero.

That's okay, because the language itself is not the problem. 
Almost all problems with the language can be fixed by others. 
Walter and Andrei don't have much to do with editor support, for 
instance, and I doubt that they are familiar with the IDE world 
even if they did want to get involved.

Anyone can start a group to work on something. If you want to put 
together a group to improve the IDE situation, come up with a 
plan (we need x, y, and z and here's how we'll do it), make an 
announcement on the forum, and run with it. No need to ask for 
permission, because there's nobody to ask for permission.

Mike Parker <aldacron gmail.com> writes:

On Monday, 26 June 2017 at 10:13:13 UTC, bachmeier wrote:

 Now we have one, and by my count, the number of posts from 
 Walter and Andrei are zero.

Actually, they have one each: Walter's "Snowflake Strings" [1] 
and Andrei's "Introspection, Introspection Everywhere" [2]

There are more in the pipeline, so we'll hear from them again a 
little ways down the road.

https://dlang.org/blog/2017/02/22/snowflake-strings/
https://dlang.org/blog/2017/05/22/introspection-introspection-everywhere/

bachmeier <no spam.net> writes:

On Monday, 26 June 2017 at 11:09:47 UTC, Mike Parker wrote:
 On Monday, 26 June 2017 at 10:13:13 UTC, bachmeier wrote:

 Now we have one, and by my count, the number of posts from 
 Walter and Andrei are zero.

 Actually, they have one each: Walter's "Snowflake Strings" [1] 
 and Andrei's "Introspection, Introspection Everywhere" [2]

 There are more in the pipeline, so we'll hear from them again a 
 little ways down the road.

 https://dlang.org/blog/2017/02/22/snowflake-strings/
 https://dlang.org/blog/2017/05/22/introspection-introspection-everywhere/

Sorry, I was a bit sloppy. I meant posts from the perspective of 
leaders saying "this is the plan going forward". These are more 
of what I would consider technical posts rather than big picture 
plans for the future posts.

Seb <seb wilzba.ch> writes:

On Monday, 26 June 2017 at 12:59:56 UTC, bachmeier wrote:
 On Monday, 26 June 2017 at 11:09:47 UTC, Mike Parker wrote:
 On Monday, 26 June 2017 at 10:13:13 UTC, bachmeier wrote:

 Now we have one, and by my count, the number of posts from 
 Walter and Andrei are zero.

 Actually, they have one each: Walter's "Snowflake Strings" [1] 
 and Andrei's "Introspection, Introspection Everywhere" [2]

 There are more in the pipeline, so we'll hear from them again 
 a little ways down the road.

 https://dlang.org/blog/2017/02/22/snowflake-strings/
 https://dlang.org/blog/2017/05/22/introspection-introspection-everywhere/

 Sorry, I was a bit sloppy. I meant posts from the perspective 
 of leaders saying "this is the plan going forward". These are 
 more of what I would consider technical posts rather than big 
 picture plans for the future posts.

They publish a high-level vision every six months (e.g. 
https://wiki.dlang.org/Vision/2017H1) -maybe we should shoot out 
a short blog post about it in the future, so that it receives 
more publicity?

bachmeier <no spam.net> writes:

On Monday, 26 June 2017 at 16:14:32 UTC, Seb wrote:

 They publish a high-level vision every six months (e.g. 
 https://wiki.dlang.org/Vision/2017H1) -maybe we should shoot 
 out a short blog post about it in the future, so that it 
 receives more publicity?

As I recall, the hope was for communication more often than every 
six months, and with more detail. Personally, I don't know if it 
would help. They're not involved with much outside of the 
language itself, and for the most part, the language is not D's 
problem.

jmh530 <john.michael.hall gmail.com> writes:

On Monday, 26 June 2017 at 17:15:50 UTC, bachmeier wrote:
 On Monday, 26 June 2017 at 16:14:32 UTC, Seb wrote:

 They publish a high-level vision every six months (e.g. 
 https://wiki.dlang.org/Vision/2017H1) -maybe we should shoot 
 out a short blog post about it in the future, so that it 
 receives more publicity?

 As I recall, the hope was for communication more often than 
 every six months, and with more detail. Personally, I don't 
 know if it would help. They're not involved with much outside 
 of the language itself, and for the most part, the language is 
 not D's problem.

My sense is that communication is moving in the right direction. 
Not everything needs to come from Walter and Andrei.

I agree that a blog post on the next Vision document would be 
reasonable.

Wulfklaue <wulfklaue wulfklaue.com> writes:

On Monday, 26 June 2017 at 10:13:13 UTC, bachmeier wrote:
 Anyone can start a group to work on something. If you want to 
 put together a group to improve the IDE situation, come up with 
 a plan (we need x, y, and z and here's how we'll do it), make 
 an announcement on the forum, and run with it. No need to ask 
 for permission, because there's nobody to ask for permission.

I think you hit the nail on that head with that one. There is 
nobody to ask permission but the other side of the shoe is also, 
there is nobody to push for it.

We can talk about it for ages but very few people have the time 
to pick up projects beyond our own. It helps when you are writing 
a project and you need a feature/library that D does not have. 
And in the end you public that feature/library. And the 
feature/library get maintained as long as that project is 
relevant to your needs.

This is something that is noticeable in D especially, a lot of 
projects are a result from people needing something, they write 
it. But the moment they do not need it anymore? There is in a lot 
of cases nobody to take over the project for various reasons.

D feels at times too much incomplete. And the above mentioned 
point is one of them.

There is no real leadership to push for features. It seems to me, 
that Walter and Andrei live in there happy little world, writing 
new features into D that they want / find interesting. Nothing 
wrong with that. But they are somewhat the official leaders of 
D...

Maybe its better if D gets a community leader / director / 
communication expert or whatever the titles, who's job is not 
pure development ( some knowledge is always a plus ) but to focus 
the resources ( by acquiring talent, money, publicity, ... ) in 
actually enhancing D its eco system.

All the talk before technically comes down to this. Its not about 
simply electing yourself to write a library/feature that D is 
missing and that is. That does not work because it temporary 
solves one issue but not the global. Anyway, off lunch, back to 
the salt mines.

Ecstatic Coder <ecstatic.coder gmail.com> writes:

On Monday, 26 June 2017 at 11:10:42 UTC, Wulfklaue wrote:
 On Monday, 26 June 2017 at 10:13:13 UTC, bachmeier wrote:
 Anyone can start a group to work on something. If you want to 
 put together a group to improve the IDE situation, come up 
 with a plan (we need x, y, and z and here's how we'll do it), 
 make an announcement on the forum, and run with it. No need to 
 ask for permission, because there's nobody to ask for 
 permission.

 I think you hit the nail on that head with that one. There is 
 nobody to ask permission but the other side of the shoe is 
 also, there is nobody to push for it.

 We can talk about it for ages but very few people have the time 
 to pick up projects beyond our own. It helps when you are 
 writing a project and you need a feature/library that D does 
 not have. And in the end you public that feature/library. And 
 the feature/library get maintained as long as that project is 
 relevant to your needs.

 This is something that is noticeable in D especially, a lot of 
 projects are a result from people needing something, they write 
 it. But the moment they do not need it anymore? There is in a 
 lot of cases nobody to take over the project for various 
 reasons.

 D feels at times too much incomplete. And the above mentioned 
 point is one of them.

 There is no real leadership to push for features. It seems to 
 me, that Walter and Andrei live in there happy little world, 
 writing new features into D that they want / find interesting. 
 Nothing wrong with that. But they are somewhat the official 
 leaders of D...

 Maybe its better if D gets a community leader / director / 
 communication expert or whatever the titles, who's job is not 
 pure development ( some knowledge is always a plus ) but to 
 focus the resources ( by acquiring talent, money, publicity, 
 ... ) in actually enhancing D its eco system.

 All the talk before technically comes down to this. Its not 
 about simply electing yourself to write a library/feature that 
 D is missing and that is. That does not work because it 
 temporary solves one issue but not the global. Anyway, off 
 lunch, back to the salt mines.

+1

bachmeier <no spam.net> writes:

On Monday, 26 June 2017 at 11:10:42 UTC, Wulfklaue wrote:

 There is no real leadership to push for features. It seems to 
 me, that Walter and Andrei live in there happy little world, 
 writing new features into D that they want / find interesting. 
 Nothing wrong with that. But they are somewhat the official 
 leaders of D...

At the same time, this is the case for many languages. The 
leadership worries about the language and leaves IDE support and 
such to the community. It's not different from what I've seen 
over the years for Clojure, Python, Haskell, OCaml, Scala, Ruby, 
R, and probably others.

Ecstatic Coder <ecstatic.coder gmail.com> writes:

On Saturday, 24 June 2017 at 18:10:54 UTC, Adam D. Ruppe wrote:
 On Friday, 23 June 2017 at 18:26:43 UTC, Ecstatic Coder wrote:
 I'm also in favor that some of your personal developments be 
 converted into std libs.

 Eh, std libs is where you lose me. I don't mind offering a 
 "just works" dmd download on my website, with my packaging dmd 
 for some particular purposes, or on the official site, that 
 includes all the stuff. But I have no interest in being part of 
 Phobos and losing control of my projects.

 Now, I think Phobos should be open to those things, where the 
 modules are owned by third parties and just packaged as a 
 standard library. The phobos devs might fork it or whatever, of 
 course, but this would be more like a Linux distribution than a 
 corporate merger - the individual packages in a Linux distro 
 are still owned by outside parties, and the distro maintainers 
 just bring them in and might slightly modify them to fit their 
 thing better.

 From the user side, it looks like a traditional std lib, but 
 from the developer side, it is more of a bazaar than a 
 cathedral.

+1 :)

Actually D doesn't need hundreds of additional types and 
functions in the libraries.

Look for instance this Go code :

package main

import (
     "log"
     "net/http"
)

func main() {
     http.HandleFunc("/", func(w http.ResponseWriter, r 
*http.Request) {
         http.ServeFile(w, r, r.URL.Path[1:]);
     });

     log.Fatal(http.ListenAndServe(":80", nil));
}

Two lines of code, that's all that's needed to serve an entire 
website, with all sorts of files (html, css, js, jpg, png, etc) 
located in plenty of directories.

NO framework required. Nada. Just a standard Go installation.

Same for Node.js. It's 100% batteries included...

So having just a few types and functions similar to those of Go 
and Node.js, without requiring to install a complete framework 
like vibe.d for such basic cases would definitely make a HUGE 
difference in terms of IMMEDIATE usability for D.

Go is very popular for web development because most developer can 
already do 99% of their work JUST with the standard libraries.

These few web server functions are generally more than enough to 
quickly build most functionalities with just a few lines of code.

Unfortunately, D lacks these few "standard building blocks".

We can implement the same functionalities in D with a THIRDPARTY 
FRAMEWORK, but not with the few "building blocks" provided by 
standard libraries functions.

Which is very sad, because webserver development is a domain 

everybody is willing to use a full framework just to have the 
same functionalities as these two simple lines of Go code.

=?UTF-8?Q?S=c3=b6nke_Ludwig?= <sludwig+d outerproduct.org> writes:

Am 24.06.2017 um 21:22 schrieb Ecstatic Coder:
 package main

 import (
     "log"
     "net/http"
 )

 func main() {
     http.HandleFunc("/", func(w http.ResponseWriter, r *http.Request) {
         http.ServeFile(w, r, r.URL.Path[1:]);
     });

     log.Fatal(http.ListenAndServe(":80", nil));
 }

/++ dub.sdl
     name "webserver"
     dependency "vibe-d:http" version="~>0.7.31"
+/
module main;

import vibe.core.core;
import vibe.http.fileserver;
import vibe.http.server;

void main()
{
     listenHTTP(new HTTPServerSettings, serveStaticFiles("./"));
     runApplication();
}

$ dub main.d

Although of course vibe.d is not included with the compiler, this works 
out of the box for a standard DMD/LDC installation.

Ecstatic Coder <ecstatic.coder gmail.com> writes:

On Saturday, 24 June 2017 at 20:29:23 UTC, Sönke Ludwig wrote:
 Am 24.06.2017 um 21:22 schrieb Ecstatic Coder:
 package main

 import (
     "log"
     "net/http"
 )

 func main() {
     http.HandleFunc("/", func(w http.ResponseWriter, r 
 *http.Request) {
         http.ServeFile(w, r, r.URL.Path[1:]);
     });

     log.Fatal(http.ListenAndServe(":80", nil));
 }

 /++ dub.sdl
     name "webserver"
     dependency "vibe-d:http" version="~>0.7.31"
 +/
 module main;

 import vibe.core.core;
 import vibe.http.fileserver;
 import vibe.http.server;

 void main()
 {
     listenHTTP(new HTTPServerSettings, serveStaticFiles("./"));
     runApplication();
 }

 $ dub main.d

 Although of course vibe.d is not included with the compiler, 
 this works out of the box for a standard DMD/LDC installation.

Exactly what I mean.

Just rename the three imports into std.*, make this available at 
installation, et voilà :)

Should not require too much work...

Adam D. Ruppe <destructionator gmail.com> writes:

On Saturday, 24 June 2017 at 21:04:36 UTC, Ecstatic Coder wrote:
 Just rename the three imports into std.*, make this available 
 at installation, et voilà :)

Or just leave it how it is and let it download the package 
automatically!

I'm pretty sure that always works with an out-of-the box dmd 
installation today.

It isn't ideal to me yet, but I do think it is closer to what you 
want than you think...

Andrei Alexandrescu <SeeWebsiteForEmail erdani.com> writes:

On 6/24/17 9:29 PM, Sönke Ludwig wrote:
 Am 24.06.2017 um 21:22 schrieb Ecstatic Coder:
 package main

 import (
     "log"
     "net/http"
 )

 func main() {
     http.HandleFunc("/", func(w http.ResponseWriter, r *http.Request) {
         http.ServeFile(w, r, r.URL.Path[1:]);
     });

     log.Fatal(http.ListenAndServe(":80", nil));
 }

 
 /++ dub.sdl
      name "webserver"
      dependency "vibe-d:http" version="~>0.7.31"
 +/
 module main;
 
 import vibe.core.core;
 import vibe.http.fileserver;
 import vibe.http.server;
 
 void main()
 {
      listenHTTP(new HTTPServerSettings, serveStaticFiles("./"));
      runApplication();
 }
 
 $ dub main.d
 
 Although of course vibe.d is not included with the compiler, this works 
 out of the box for a standard DMD/LDC installation.

This should be a blog post. -- Andrei

Wulfklaue <wulfklaue wulfklaue.com> writes:

On Saturday, 24 June 2017 at 20:29:23 UTC, Sönke Ludwig wrote:
 /++ dub.sdl
     name "webserver"
     dependency "vibe-d:http" version="~>0.7.31"
 +/
 module main;

 import vibe.core.core;
 import vibe.http.fileserver;
 import vibe.http.server;

 void main()
 {
     listenHTTP(new HTTPServerSettings, serveStaticFiles("./"));
     runApplication();
 }

 $ dub main.d

 Although of course vibe.d is not included with the compiler, 
 this works out of the box for a standard DMD/LDC installation.

No it does not...

Attempt 1:
=========

Create main.d file, insert code. dub main.d

 readPackageRecipe called with filename with unknown extension: 
 + dub.sdl
      name "webserver"
      dependency "vibe-d

Attempt 2:
=========

Dub init xxxxx
-> enter sdl
-> ...

Update xxxxx/src/app.d, insert code. Run dub ...

 Performing "debug" build using dmd for x86.
 webser ~master: building configuration "application"...
 source\app.d(7,8): Error: module core is in file 
 'vibe\core\core.d' which cannot be read
 import path[0] = source
 import path[1] = C:\D\dmd2\windows\bin\..\..\src\phobos
 import path[2] = C:\D\dmd2\windows\bin\..\..\src\druntime\import
 dmd failed with exit code 1.

Attempt 3:
=========

dub init xxxxx
-> enter sdl
-> ...

Insert dependency into xxxxx/dub.sdl.
Update file xxxxx/src/app.d, insert code. Run dub ...

Works

Attempt 4:
=========

Place dub.sdl into main project root directory.

Add the dependency information into the file.

workspaces-d ( Visual Studio Code ) crash, crash, crash, crash. 
Reason. Already a folder called Webserver present and this 
creates a conflic.

Attempt 5:
=========

Place dub.sdl into main project root directory.

Add the dependency information into the file ( now with different 
project file ).

Create WebTest2.d file, insert code. dub WebTest2.d

 dub .\WebTest2.d
 readPackageRecipe called with filename with unknown extension: 
 + dub.sdl
      name "webserver"
     dependency "vibe-d

Conclusion:
===========

 From 5 different attempt, only one works. All the rest are how 
people may attempt it and will run into a crash or other 
non-working issues.

It requires knowledge of dub.
It requires selecting the correct sdl format, when running dub 
init
It requires knowing that the dependency needs to be in a dub.sdl 
file, in a actual project.
...

Go idiomatic it is not unfortunately.

As Ecstatic Coder pointed out. The Go http is a default core 
package of Go. For D it means depending on a 3th party solution. 
Currently vibe.d 0.8 is undergoing a rewrite. This breaks some 
basic functionally with the more module design. A issue if a user 
had installed a 0.7.30 or earlier version.

There is this bad habit with assuming that people will understand 
how to run the samples posted or provided on there first attempt 
at using D. As seen above, its very easy to make mistakes. A 
programming language is like a drug. If people like there first 
experience, they may get hooked. If its a bad "trip", most will 
not mention a word and simply not try again.

=?UTF-8?Q?S=c3=b6nke_Ludwig?= <sludwig+d outerproduct.org> writes:

Am 25.06.2017 um 00:16 schrieb Wulfklaue:
 On Saturday, 24 June 2017 at 20:29:23 UTC, Sönke Ludwig wrote:
 /++ dub.sdl
     name "webserver"
     dependency "vibe-d:http" version="~>0.7.31"
 +/
 module main;

 import vibe.core.core;
 import vibe.http.fileserver;
 import vibe.http.server;

 void main()
 {
     listenHTTP(new HTTPServerSettings, serveStaticFiles("./"));
     runApplication();
 }

 $ dub main.d

 Although of course vibe.d is not included with the compiler, this
 works out of the box for a standard DMD/LDC installation.

 No it does not...

I've got to admit that I typed this from the top of my head without 
actually running it, and of course I got the syntax wrong. The first 
line must be "/+ dub.sdl:", with a colon at the end.

The error message is off, because, after a refactoring, the colon that 
should end the first line is also accepted on any later line within the 
comment. I'll prepare a PR to fix this.

Wulfklaue <wulfklaue wulfklaue.com> writes:

On Saturday, 24 June 2017 at 22:16:11 UTC, Wulfklaue wrote:

 Attempt 1:
 Attempt 2:
 Attempt 3:
 Attempt 4:
 Attempt 5:
 =========

Almost forgot to mention, this was done under Windows ( where the 
inline does not work ). It works under Linux but that is a 
different issue.

=?UTF-8?Q?S=c3=b6nke_Ludwig?= <sludwig+d outerproduct.org> writes:

Am 25.06.2017 um 01:01 schrieb Wulfklaue:
 On Saturday, 24 June 2017 at 22:16:11 UTC, Wulfklaue wrote:

 Attempt 1:
 Attempt 2:
 Attempt 3:
 Attempt 4:
 Attempt 5:
 =========

 Almost forgot to mention, this was done under Windows ( where the inline
 does not work ). It works under Linux but that is a different issue.

With inline, do you mean the embedded package recipe? Works for me on 
Windows if you add the colon.

Wulfklaue <wulfklaue wulfklaue.com> writes:

On Sunday, 25 June 2017 at 07:34:57 UTC, Sönke Ludwig wrote:
 With inline, do you mean the embedded package recipe? Works for 
 me on Windows if you add the colon.

Strange, colon was there. Did not work on Windows. Same error as 
without the colon. This is why i mentioned that it worked under 
linux ( windows linux subsystem ) but not on pure Windows.

Ecstatic Coder <ecstatic.coder gmail.com> writes:

On Monday, 26 June 2017 at 07:19:21 UTC, Wulfklaue wrote:
 On Sunday, 25 June 2017 at 07:34:57 UTC, Sönke Ludwig wrote:
 With inline, do you mean the embedded package recipe? Works 
 for me on Windows if you add the colon.

 Strange, colon was there. Did not work on Windows. Same error 
 as without the colon. This is why i mentioned that it worked 
 under linux ( windows linux subsystem ) but not on pure Windows.

LOL

QED... ;)

=?UTF-8?Q?S=c3=b6nke_Ludwig?= <sludwig+d outerproduct.org> writes:

Am 26.06.2017 um 09:19 schrieb Wulfklaue:
 On Sunday, 25 June 2017 at 07:34:57 UTC, Sönke Ludwig wrote:
 With inline, do you mean the embedded package recipe? Works for me on
 Windows if you add the colon.

 Strange, colon was there. Did not work on Windows. Same error as without
 the colon. This is why i mentioned that it worked under linux ( windows
 linux subsystem ) but not on pure Windows.

Can you post the error message? I didn't use the Linux sub system.

Wulfklaue <wulfklaue wulfklaue.com> writes:

On Monday, 26 June 2017 at 08:29:54 UTC, Sönke Ludwig wrote:
 Am 26.06.2017 um 09:19 schrieb Wulfklaue:
 Can you post the error message? I didn't use the Linux sub 
 system.

 From what i remember on my home system, the issue was it tried to 
store the file in Windows temporary directory.

Just tried it on my my work PC ( with visual studio code portable 
) and got a slightly different error:

 C:\Users\xxx\AppData\Local\Temp\VSCodePortableTemp\.dub\build\
ibe-d:utils-0.7.31: The directory name is invalid.

I assume the error is similar to the one i had in the weekend 
because its trying to use the temp folder again. Just different 
temp path because of the portable editor ;). Note: At home its a 
full VSC installation, not this portable version.

=?UTF-8?Q?S=c3=b6nke_Ludwig?= <sludwig+d outerproduct.org> writes:

Am 26.06.2017 um 10:41 schrieb Wulfklaue:
 On Monday, 26 June 2017 at 08:29:54 UTC, Sönke Ludwig wrote:
 Am 26.06.2017 um 09:19 schrieb Wulfklaue:
 Can you post the error message? I didn't use the Linux sub system.

 From what i remember on my home system, the issue was it tried to store
 the file in Windows temporary directory.

 Just tried it on my my work PC ( with visual studio code portable ) and
 got a slightly different error:

 C:\Users\xxx\AppData\Local\Temp\VSCodePortableTemp\.dub\build\vibe-d:utils-0.7.31:
 The directory name is invalid.

 I assume the error is similar to the one i had in the weekend because
 its trying to use the temp folder again. Just different temp path
 because of the portable editor ;). Note: At home its a full VSC
 installation, not this portable version.

Okay, thanks, that explains it. I didn't realize that I'm using DUB 
master instead of the latest release, and this issue is already fixed 
there. A workaround is to use "dub --single webserver.d" instead 
(performs the build normally instead of building in the temp folder).

Wulfklaue <wulfklaue wulfklaue.com> writes:

On Monday, 26 June 2017 at 08:54:23 UTC, Sönke Ludwig wrote:
 Okay, thanks, that explains it. I didn't realize that I'm using 
 DUB master instead of the latest release, and this issue is 
 already fixed there. A workaround is to use "dub --single 
 webserver.d" instead (performs the build normally instead of 
 building in the temp folder).

Indeed, that works a lot better :)

Timon Gehr <timon.gehr gmx.ch> writes:

On 24.06.2017 22:29, Sönke Ludwig wrote:
 Am 24.06.2017 um 21:22 schrieb Ecstatic Coder:
 package main

 import (
     "log"
     "net/http"
 )

 func main() {
     http.HandleFunc("/", func(w http.ResponseWriter, r *http.Request) {
         http.ServeFile(w, r, r.URL.Path[1:]);
     });

     log.Fatal(http.ListenAndServe(":80", nil));
 }

 
 /++ dub.sdl
      name "webserver"
      dependency "vibe-d:http" version="~>0.7.31"
 +/
 module main;
 
 import vibe.core.core;
 import vibe.http.fileserver;
 import vibe.http.server;
 
 void main()
 {
      listenHTTP(new HTTPServerSettings, serveStaticFiles("./"));
      runApplication();
 }
 
 $ dub main.d
 
 Although of course vibe.d is not included with the compiler, this works 
 out of the box for a standard DMD/LDC installation.
 

$ cat main.d
/++ dub.sdl
     name "webserver"
     dependency "vibe-d:http" version="~>0.7.31"
+/
module main;

import vibe.core.core;
import vibe.http.fileserver;
import vibe.http.server;

void main()
{
     listenHTTP(new HTTPServerSettings, serveStaticFiles("./"));
     runApplication();
}
$ dub main.d
readPackageRecipe called with filename with unknown extension: + dub.sdl
     name "webserver"
     dependency "vibe-d

What am I doing wrong?

=?UTF-8?Q?S=c3=b6nke_Ludwig?= <sludwig+d outerproduct.org> writes:

Am 25.06.2017 um 00:18 schrieb Timon Gehr:
 $ cat main.d
 /++ dub.sdl: <--  colon missing here
 (...)

 What am I doing wrong?

I forgot a colon at the end of the first line. With that it *actually* 
works now.

Timon Gehr <timon.gehr gmx.ch> writes:

On 25.06.2017 00:34, Sönke Ludwig wrote:
 Am 25.06.2017 um 00:18 schrieb Timon Gehr:
 $ cat main.d
 /++ dub.sdl: <--  colon missing here
 (...)

 What am I doing wrong?

 
 I forgot a colon at the end of the first line. With that it *actually* 
 works now.

$ dub main.d
Failed to listen on :::80
Failed to listen on 0.0.0.0:80
object.Exception ../../.dub/packages/vibe-d-0.7.31/vibe-d/source/vibe/
ttp/server.d(1698): 
Failed to listen for incoming HTTP connections on any of the supplied 
interfaces.
----------------

Wulfklaue <wulfklaue wulfklaue.com> writes:

On Saturday, 24 June 2017 at 23:00:59 UTC, Timon Gehr wrote:
 $ dub main.d
 Failed to listen on :::80
 Failed to listen on 0.0.0.0:80
 object.Exception ../../.dub/packages/vibe-d-0.7.31/vibe-d/source/vibe/
ttp/server.d(1698): Failed to listen for incoming HTTP connections on any of
the supplied interfaces.
 ----------------

You probably already have a server active on port 80. That is why 
it fails. You need to use a different port or temporary turn off 
the service that is using port 80 currently.

Timon Gehr <timon.gehr gmx.ch> writes:

On 25.06.2017 01:03, Wulfklaue wrote:
 On Saturday, 24 June 2017 at 23:00:59 UTC, Timon Gehr wrote:
 $ dub main.d
 Failed to listen on :::80
 Failed to listen on 0.0.0.0:80
 object.Exception ../../.dub/packages/vibe-d-0.7.31/vibe-d/source/vibe/
ttp/server.d(1698): 
 Failed to listen for incoming HTTP connections on any of the supplied 
 interfaces.
 ----------------

 
 You probably already have a server active on port 80. That is why it 
 fails. You need to use a different port or temporary turn off the 
 service that is using port 80 currently.

$ sudo netstat -tulpn | grep :80
$

Adam D. Ruppe <destructionator gmail.com> writes:

On Saturday, 24 June 2017 at 23:00:59 UTC, Timon Gehr wrote:
 Failed to listen on :::80

Listening on port 80 requires root anyway. That's why like my 
cgi.d uses 8085 - anything over 1024 can be listened by any user 
(and is less likely to have an existing program on it)

Timon Gehr <timon.gehr gmx.ch> writes:

On 25.06.2017 01:09, Adam D. Ruppe wrote:
 On Saturday, 24 June 2017 at 23:00:59 UTC, Timon Gehr wrote:
 Failed to listen on :::80

 
 Listening on port 80 requires root anyway. That's why like my cgi.d uses 
 8085 - anything over 1024 can be listened by any user (and is less 
 likely to have an existing program on it)
 

Thanks! I guessed as much, but I don't have a setup where root can build 
the code. (And I don't see why it should.)

=?UTF-8?Q?S=c3=b6nke_Ludwig?= <sludwig outerproduct.org> writes:

Am 25.06.2017 um 01:12 schrieb Timon Gehr:
 On 25.06.2017 01:09, Adam D. Ruppe wrote:
 On Saturday, 24 June 2017 at 23:00:59 UTC, Timon Gehr wrote:
 Failed to listen on :::80

 Listening on port 80 requires root anyway. That's why like my cgi.d 
 uses 8085 - anything over 1024 can be listened by any user (and is 
 less likely to have an existing program on it)

 
 Thanks! I guessed as much, but I don't have a setup where root can build 
 the code. (And I don't see why it should.)

Usually I'd use 8080 for examples, but the original example used port 
80, so I just followed along. HTTPServerSettings has a .port field that 
can be used to change the default.

Wulfklaue <wulfklaue wulfklaue.com> writes:

On Saturday, 24 June 2017 at 22:18:29 UTC, Timon Gehr wrote:
 $ cat main.d
 /++ dub.sdl
     name "webserver"
     dependency "vibe-d:http" version="~>0.7.31"
 +/
 module main;

 import vibe.core.core;
 import vibe.http.fileserver;
 import vibe.http.server;

 void main()
 {
     listenHTTP(new HTTPServerSettings, serveStaticFiles("./"));
     runApplication();
 }
 $ dub main.d
 readPackageRecipe called with filename with unknown extension: 
 + dub.sdl
     name "webserver"
     dependency "vibe-d

 What am I doing wrong?

See the post above yours. Attempt 3:

Run:

* CMD> dub init projectname
* Enter sdl for your project file
* Enter the rest like you want
* CMD> cd projectname
* Edit the dub.sdl file and add the "dependency "vibe-d:http" 
version="~>0.7.31"" at the end.
* CMD> cd src
* Now edit the app.d file and replace the code with. No need for 
the /++ stuff.

 module main;

 import vibe.core.core;
 import vibe.http.fileserver;
 import vibe.http.server;

 void main()
 {
     listenHTTP(new HTTPServerSettings, serveStaticFiles("./"));
     runApplication();
 }

* Go back to your projectname folder and run dub
* CMD> dub
* And with some luck it will run correctly.


And thank for proving my point that some do not understand that 
something they consider simply, is not always simply for people 
doing it the first time.

Now frankly, if the whole /++ dub.sdl +/ actually worked as a 
file based dependency, now that will be a interesting feature ;)

Adam D. Ruppe <destructionator gmail.com> writes:

On Saturday, 24 June 2017 at 19:22:48 UTC, Ecstatic Coder wrote:
 Two lines of code, that's all that's needed to serve an entire 
 website, with all sorts of files (html, css, js, jpg, png, etc) 
 located in plenty of directories.

Fun fact: I actually do *not* have code that does that in one 
line. With my cgi.d, you'd have to roll your own with std.file 
and the cgi params or something. It isn't hard, but I didn't 
provide my own function since it is useless to me - serving 
static files is done brilliantly well by your production web 
server, so why not just use it?!


Anyway, my point is that anybody can put a few examples in the 
stdlib and say "look at how easy this is!", but the real question 
is how easy it is to do something that the example writers didn't 
think of. That's why I want to promote decentralization - with a 
lot of people owning their own projects, you are more likely to 
find what you need.

Just at the same time, you're right that locating, evaluating, 
and actually using these things is a hassle. (In fact, I find in 
most languages that libraries are NOT worth the hassle and I 
avoid using them!)


So that's why the balance I want to get is one where the projects 
are developed individually, but particularly useful/popular ones 
are bundled by the central maintainers... or ranked by the lib 
repo website (code.dlang.org or otherwise) and trivially 
downloaded on demand. I also want tutorials with a lot of fully 
working examples available and easily discovered to show how to 
use these.

We're currently OK at this, but it could be better.

 Which is very sad, because webserver development is a domain 

 everybody is willing to use a full framework just to have the 
 same functionalities as these two simple lines of Go code.

The real WTF is you'd use two lines of Go code when you can just 
copy your files into /var/www/htdocs and let Apache do it for you.

Martin Tschierschke <mt smartdolphin.de> writes:

On Friday, 23 June 2017 at 08:29:33 UTC, cym13 wrote:
 On Friday, 23 June 2017 at 07:44:36 UTC, Ecstatic Coder wrote:
 Huh? You were asked about concrete action points that in your 
 PoV would improve dlang.org. You can't just say "make it



[...]
 Problem is, low profile programmers aren't the most interesting 
 target for D right now....

[...]
Two ideas:
A) place a changing slogan (like the changing code snippets) with
short arguments - sometimes a joke or. comic from the community.

Examples:

I think that I can safely say that nobody understands C++ 
template mechanics.
  (From the "famous" Richard Deyman 
https://dlang.org/spec/template.html)


Memory safety will kill C.
Walter Bright Link: 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lo6Q2vB9AAg&t=24m15s



The Evolution of Programmers:
:C
:C++
:D

(From the Forum + Alis talk 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vYEKEIpM2zo)


Time is Money - Time is live ... Manu... (please make it complete)



80%-90% of the web is based on interpreting languages, is there 
no alternative to this waste of CPU, Time and Energy?  Vibe.d !
https://w3techs.com/technologies/details/pl-php/all/all
http://vibed.org/
EmTee

B) Idea please think about an explain flag / link beside the code 
examples,
because if you don't know the foo!baz(value) syntax.
The ! is uncommon, I first thought it is like in the "gsub!" 
expression in ruby...
but could not bring it together...:-)

dlangPupil <x x989898998.com> writes:

On Thursday, 22 June 2017 at 19:19:20 UTC, Ecstatic Coder wrote:
 class TOTO

...I think that trying to
 make the website very appealing to inexperienced programmers as 
 well could significantly broaden its user base.

Although I am admittedly an LOB kind of person who cares little 
for games or gamification, I do see the benefit of using "fun" 
use-case examples, like a tic-tac-toe game, or a soda machine 
simulation.  Such recognizable zero-overhead/zero-noise metaphors 
simplify the tasks of understanding a program and learning its 
language.

By contrast, being asked to decipher a mysterious and unintuitive 
program like the fatuous tutu example would leave me resenting 
the distraction and cognitive overhead.  Dammit Jim, I'm a 
programmer, not a damned word puzzle competitor!

But that's just me!

So... instead of showcasing just one or another program type on 
the website's landing page, why not provide a tabbed dialog or 
menu that lets users select the kind of program that most 
interests them, e.g., LOB, web, games, STEM, etc.  This would 
avoid alienating those readers who believe that effective 
technical and instructional communication require the 
maximization of signal-to-noise ratio ABOVE ALL ELSE.

Some other ideas for introductory illustrative examples for the 
website would be to include for each program:

1) A description of the program's function so readers know what 
to look for.
2) The expected output.
3) A walk-through, when needed.
4) The same program in other languages, with call-outs to 
identify the unique features and benefits of Dlang.

Ecstatic Coder <ecstatic.coder gmail.com> writes:

On Tuesday, 27 June 2017 at 01:53:20 UTC, dlangPupil wrote:
 On Thursday, 22 June 2017 at 19:19:20 UTC, Ecstatic Coder wrote:
 class TOTO

...I think that trying to
 make the website very appealing to inexperienced programmers 
 as well could significantly broaden its user base.

 Although I am admittedly an LOB kind of person who cares little 
 for games or gamification, I do see the benefit of using "fun" 
 use-case examples, like a tic-tac-toe game, or a soda machine 
 simulation.  Such recognizable zero-overhead/zero-noise 
 metaphors simplify the tasks of understanding a program and 
 learning its language.

 By contrast, being asked to decipher a mysterious and 
 unintuitive program like the fatuous tutu example would leave 
 me resenting the distraction and cognitive overhead.  Dammit 
 Jim, I'm a programmer, not a damned word puzzle competitor!

 But that's just me!

 So... instead of showcasing just one or another program type on 
 the website's landing page, why not provide a tabbed dialog or 
 menu that lets users select the kind of program that most 
 interests them, e.g., LOB, web, games, STEM, etc.  This would 
 avoid alienating those readers who believe that effective 
 technical and instructional communication require the 
 maximization of signal-to-noise ratio ABOVE ALL ELSE.

 Some other ideas for introductory illustrative examples for the 
 website would be to include for each program:

 1) A description of the program's function so readers know what 
 to look for.
 2) The expected output.
 3) A walk-through, when needed.
 4) The same program in other languages, with call-outs to 
 identify the unique features and benefits of Dlang.

I agree with you.

Let me first say that the tutu code was there just to illustrate 
to show which features should be shown in examples. Simple D 
features, not complicated ones.

D code is easy to make and read.

That is what people should know about the D language.

I'm in favor of bein able to select an example among a list on 
the left side of the screen, and on the right side the example 
appears with an explanation below.

The default example is the classic hello word, then we show how 
to declare and use integers, strings, arrays, maps, then how to 
declare classes, then we have interesting "use-case" examples : 
process a text file line by line, using regular expressions, 
guess-a-number game, sort lines in alphabetical order, etc.

Kotlin uses a quite similar approach if I remember well.

Ecstatic Coder <ecstatic.coder gmail.com> writes:

 The default example is the classic hello word, then we show how 
 to declare and use integers, strings, arrays, maps, then how to 
 declare classes, then we have interesting "use-case" examples : 
 process a text file line by line, using regular expressions, 
 guess-a-number game, sort lines in alphabetical order, etc.

Within the next few months I'll try to find some free time to 
write all these examples and put them in a D_TUTORIAL project on 
my senselogic github account.

The ui/game examples will be based on a small Nuklear-inspired 
std.ui library, and the web examples based on a small 
Vibe-inspired std.web library.

I guess that as usual this will remain unused, but that doesn't 
matter actually, as they will be useful to my kids as a reference 
examples for their personal use, which is already fine by me.