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Most people I know have not heard of D, but have definitely heard of Go, Swift and (less often, but still frequently) Rust. If in 16 years D has not achieved ma

Most people I know have not heard of D, but have definitely heard of Go, Swift and (less often, but still frequently) Rust. If in 16 years D has not achieved mass adoption, what is different now, when there are more competitors that offer better features?

kaleidic 9y ago
It's a big world out there. Would you ever imagine that D would be taking market share from... Extended Pascal? But there's a naval architect who designs great big ships with a 500k sloc codebase he is exploring porting to D. Web guys get the attention but enterprise users are a much bigger world than just that. If something is growing very quickly then saying it hasn't yet dethroned C, so it won't ever be significant seems to me to be a bit brittle thinking. Compound growth and the passage of time - thats what has been underway for some time now. http://erdani.com/d/downloads.daily.png http://erdani.com/d/downloads.daily.png
- Ar-Curunir 9y ago
  I did not compare D to C, but rather to Rust, Swift, and Go. Compared to D, Go already has huge marketshare. Rust, similarly, excels in spaces that D does not endeavor to work in (no-managed-runtime settings), and is beginning to see adoption in areas where performance is critical. From what I have seen of D, it provides a C++ without some of the cruft, but without trying to solve other issues with C++-like languages (for eg: usefulness of Algebraic Data Types). Why should someone choose D today over Go or Rust for any project? I have yet to see a convincing answer.
  - acehreli 9y ago
    Over Go: D has meta programming, exceptions, and many more useful features Over Rust: No need to learn new concepts like borrowing
  - rbehrends 9y ago
    > Why should someone choose D today over Go or Rust for any project? D over Go: D has much better language mechanisms for abstraction and programming in the large. Go over D: Go has an incremental, mature GC. Rust and D do not quite target the same application domains (though there's overlap), so it's difficult to compare them. Insofar as they do (D with @nogc and @safe), the tradeoffs become rather complicated.

kaleidic 9y ago

It's a big world out there. Would you ever imagine that D would be taking market share from... Extended Pascal? But there's a naval architect who designs great big ships with a 500k sloc codebase he is exploring porting to D. Web guys get the attention but enterprise users are a much bigger world than just that. If something is growing very quickly then saying it hasn't yet dethroned C, so it won't ever be significant seems to me to be a bit brittle thinking. Compound growth and the passage of time - thats what has been underway for some time now. http://erdani.com/d/downloads.daily.png http://erdani.com/d/downloads.daily.png

Ar-Curunir 9y ago
I did not compare D to C, but rather to Rust, Swift, and Go. Compared to D, Go already has huge marketshare. Rust, similarly, excels in spaces that D does not endeavor to work in (no-managed-runtime settings), and is beginning to see adoption in areas where performance is critical. From what I have seen of D, it provides a C++ without some of the cruft, but without trying to solve other issues with C++-like languages (for eg: usefulness of Algebraic Data Types). Why should someone choose D today over Go or Rust for any project? I have yet to see a convincing answer.
- acehreli 9y ago
  Over Go: D has meta programming, exceptions, and many more useful features Over Rust: No need to learn new concepts like borrowing
- rbehrends 9y ago
  > Why should someone choose D today over Go or Rust for any project? D over Go: D has much better language mechanisms for abstraction and programming in the large. Go over D: Go has an incremental, mature GC. Rust and D do not quite target the same application domains (though there's overlap), so it's difficult to compare them. Insofar as they do (D with @nogc and @safe), the tradeoffs become rather complicated.