8 ms·

D? And others of course?

Someone1234 7y ago
D isn't really competing with anything, it never took off. It already has a smaller market share than Rust while being twice as old (almost 20 years). I'd call D a dead language. Can a dead language compete with a growing one?
- giancarlostoro 7y ago
  Facebook, Ebay, Mercedes Benz and a few others[0] don't seem to believe so. Better tell them to use a different language? I'm on a Discord for Dlang that's quite active honestly. The D community is plenty active. Their forums and IRC. Maybe not as active as other language communities, but it's not made by Mozilla or Google which gets a lot more attention. [0]: https://dlang.org/orgs-using-d.html https://dlang.org/orgs-using-d.html
  - coldtea 7y ago
    >Facebook, Ebay, Mercedes Benz and a few others[0] don't seem to believe so. Better tell them to use a different language? The already "use a different language" for most of their stuff. Their D use is tokenish, the way you can find any bizarro, niche language used somewhere big. That doesn't mean the language is in any kind of widespread use, just that some teams in some big company or another adopted it - as outliers.
  - cmcd 7y ago
    A company the size of Facebook probably has teams tinkering with all sorts of languages most companies will never use.
  - umanwizard 7y ago
    Facebook does not use any meaningful amount of D. Source: I worked at Facebook for four years. My first diff at Facebook was even in D, in a project that was already effectively abandoned by the time I changed it. It's really a tiny, insignificant minority of actively running code there, possibly zero by now.
- p0nce 7y ago
  D practionners aren't really on internet forums, let alone internet forums with a bias for whatever is new and status-enhancing (HN). Because the presumed attacks on D are constant, it's become very tiring to answer that no, it's not dead, and it's growing. The real test is in the trenches, not in a factless debate.
  - Someone1234 7y ago
    You want to talk facts, it ranks so low on Github's usage (based on Github's own API) that it isn't even ranked in the top 25 languages: https://github.com/benfred/github-analysis/#inferring-languages https://github.com/benfred/github-analysis/#inferring-langua... Rust by contrast is 16th and trending upwards year on year. So these D users that are missing from internet forums are also missing from checking in actual code. You talk about the lack of facts, but I can link you to Stackoverflow's survey, Github's usage, Google Trends, and show you that D isn't doing very well. Where's your facts here? Where is this evidence of a large number of quiet D programmers? So let's talk facts, I have, your turn.
    - iudqnolq 7y ago
      I have never used D, but possibly developers at boring companies aren't checking in code to public Github repositories?
    - p0nce 7y ago
      TIOBE index. Besides, I'm not interested in being right on HN.
      - Someone1234 7y ago
        TIOBE index shows it in decline. It peaked in 2009 and has fallen since then. It has fallen from 1.8% peak to under 1% (0.93%). Which, even if it was still 1.8% would be terrible for an almost 20 year old language. I'm not sure how a language that is in decline, and hasn't grown much in its life, isn't a dying language (I'd argue dead at under 1% after that long). > I'm not interested in being right on HN. So you show up, call out other posters for having a "factless debate," to which they respond with facts. They then ask you for the same and instead of providing them to prove your point, you're suddenly not interested in a discussion on HN? That seems like bad faith posting to me.
- eitland 7y ago
  > D isn't really competing with anything, It is competing for my attention and many others I guess. > I'd call D a dead language. Can a dead language compete with a growing one? I'm much more inclined to spend time with D than with a number of other popular languages if I could choose. I don't know if I'm alone in this, but for what I know kt might become really popular in the future. (Look to Erlang for an example of a language that went unnoticed for a couple of decades or so.) FWIW Rust is on top of my list of languages I want to master if I should get time.
- stjohnswarts 7y ago
  I always wondered why D didn't take off in the fintech industry instead of C++
Verdex 7y ago
D is in the same space, but it started off having a GC and that kind of caused it more problems that it was perhaps worth being in an almost system space. Recent work with different allocator patterns and adding the -betterC compiler flag, I think, may help D in the long run. However, I wouldn't be surprised if D never gets much more popular that it already is. The other major competitors to Rust is Zig and Jai. Of course Jai has the problem of being unreleased at the moment (and its fate is tightly bound to Jon Blow). There are also a few other languages attempting to make inroads in the space. For example, Odin and Kit. Here's my take on it though. C and C++ will always have some sort of systemic problem because they are able to do too much. In order to be a system language AND also do everything that people want a system language to do (games, embedded, high performance) you need (I assert) to have rough edges and dangerous pit falls. Rust will eventually beat C/C++ on making web browsers and similar technologies because that's what it was built to do. However, Rust probably won't be able to beat C/C++ in game development and total OS development (although it can probably be partially used for both). Enter Zig and Jai. D and Go both compete with C/C++ in a space that was temporarily taken over to Java/C#. But in the long run may end up being ceded to something that's less than a managed language but more than a system language. Ultimately I predict we'll see C/C++ slowly give way to a family of system languages that all hold different niches before finally becoming a relegated to legacy only. This could still take a few decades to complete. And if you look at newer versions of C++ it's possible that C and C++ may even evolve to hold a different niche than the wide series of domains that they used to hold onto so tightly.
- bluejekyll 7y ago
  I appreciate that you're trying to frame this as areas where all of these languages can be successful in these spaces, but for Rust in particular, this is an odd take: "In order to be a system language AND also do everything that people want a system language to do (games, embedded, high performance) you need (I assert) to have rough edges and dangerous pit falls. "Rust will eventually beat C/C++ on making web browsers and similar technologies because that's what it was built to do. However, Rust probably won't be able to beat C/C++ in game development and total OS development (although it can probably be partially used for both)." Rust has all the necessary escape hatches (through unsafe) required for these spaces. There are people working in these spaces with Rust successfully, today. So, while, the other languages you mention might find success here as well, there is no reason (from a technical perspective) that Rust will not.

D isn't really competing with anything, it never took off. It already has a smaller market share than Rust while being twice as old (almost 20 years). I'd call D a dead language. Can a dead language compete with a growing one?

giancarlostoro 7y ago
Facebook, Ebay, Mercedes Benz and a few others[0] don't seem to believe so. Better tell them to use a different language? I'm on a Discord for Dlang that's quite active honestly. The D community is plenty active. Their forums and IRC. Maybe not as active as other language communities, but it's not made by Mozilla or Google which gets a lot more attention. [0]: https://dlang.org/orgs-using-d.html https://dlang.org/orgs-using-d.html
- coldtea 7y ago
  >Facebook, Ebay, Mercedes Benz and a few others[0] don't seem to believe so. Better tell them to use a different language? The already "use a different language" for most of their stuff. Their D use is tokenish, the way you can find any bizarro, niche language used somewhere big. That doesn't mean the language is in any kind of widespread use, just that some teams in some big company or another adopted it - as outliers.
- cmcd 7y ago
  A company the size of Facebook probably has teams tinkering with all sorts of languages most companies will never use.
- umanwizard 7y ago
  Facebook does not use any meaningful amount of D. Source: I worked at Facebook for four years. My first diff at Facebook was even in D, in a project that was already effectively abandoned by the time I changed it. It's really a tiny, insignificant minority of actively running code there, possibly zero by now.
p0nce 7y ago
D practionners aren't really on internet forums, let alone internet forums with a bias for whatever is new and status-enhancing (HN). Because the presumed attacks on D are constant, it's become very tiring to answer that no, it's not dead, and it's growing. The real test is in the trenches, not in a factless debate.
- Someone1234 7y ago
  You want to talk facts, it ranks so low on Github's usage (based on Github's own API) that it isn't even ranked in the top 25 languages: https://github.com/benfred/github-analysis/#inferring-languages https://github.com/benfred/github-analysis/#inferring-langua... Rust by contrast is 16th and trending upwards year on year. So these D users that are missing from internet forums are also missing from checking in actual code. You talk about the lack of facts, but I can link you to Stackoverflow's survey, Github's usage, Google Trends, and show you that D isn't doing very well. Where's your facts here? Where is this evidence of a large number of quiet D programmers? So let's talk facts, I have, your turn.
  - iudqnolq 7y ago
    I have never used D, but possibly developers at boring companies aren't checking in code to public Github repositories?
  - p0nce 7y ago
    TIOBE index. Besides, I'm not interested in being right on HN.
    - Someone1234 7y ago
      TIOBE index shows it in decline. It peaked in 2009 and has fallen since then. It has fallen from 1.8% peak to under 1% (0.93%). Which, even if it was still 1.8% would be terrible for an almost 20 year old language. I'm not sure how a language that is in decline, and hasn't grown much in its life, isn't a dying language (I'd argue dead at under 1% after that long). > I'm not interested in being right on HN. So you show up, call out other posters for having a "factless debate," to which they respond with facts. They then ask you for the same and instead of providing them to prove your point, you're suddenly not interested in a discussion on HN? That seems like bad faith posting to me.
eitland 7y ago
> D isn't really competing with anything, It is competing for my attention and many others I guess. > I'd call D a dead language. Can a dead language compete with a growing one? I'm much more inclined to spend time with D than with a number of other popular languages if I could choose. I don't know if I'm alone in this, but for what I know kt might become really popular in the future. (Look to Erlang for an example of a language that went unnoticed for a couple of decades or so.) FWIW Rust is on top of my list of languages I want to master if I should get time.
stjohnswarts 7y ago
I always wondered why D didn't take off in the fintech industry instead of C++

Verdex 7y ago

D is in the same space, but it started off having a GC and that kind of caused it more problems that it was perhaps worth being in an almost system space. Recent work with different allocator patterns and adding the -betterC compiler flag, I think, may help D in the long run. However, I wouldn't be surprised if D never gets much more popular that it already is. The other major competitors to Rust is Zig and Jai. Of course Jai has the problem of being unreleased at the moment (and its fate is tightly bound to Jon Blow). There are also a few other languages attempting to make inroads in the space. For example, Odin and Kit. Here's my take on it though. C and C++ will always have some sort of systemic problem because they are able to do too much. In order to be a system language AND also do everything that people want a system language to do (games, embedded, high performance) you need (I assert) to have rough edges and dangerous pit falls. Rust will eventually beat C/C++ on making web browsers and similar technologies because that's what it was built to do. However, Rust probably won't be able to beat C/C++ in game development and total OS development (although it can probably be partially used for both). Enter Zig and Jai. D and Go both compete with C/C++ in a space that was temporarily taken over to Java/C#. But in the long run may end up being ceded to something that's less than a managed language but more than a system language. Ultimately I predict we'll see C/C++ slowly give way to a family of system languages that all hold different niches before finally becoming a relegated to legacy only. This could still take a few decades to complete. And if you look at newer versions of C++ it's possible that C and C++ may even evolve to hold a different niche than the wide series of domains that they used to hold onto so tightly.

bluejekyll 7y ago
I appreciate that you're trying to frame this as areas where all of these languages can be successful in these spaces, but for Rust in particular, this is an odd take: "In order to be a system language AND also do everything that people want a system language to do (games, embedded, high performance) you need (I assert) to have rough edges and dangerous pit falls. "Rust will eventually beat C/C++ on making web browsers and similar technologies because that's what it was built to do. However, Rust probably won't be able to beat C/C++ in game development and total OS development (although it can probably be partially used for both)." Rust has all the necessary escape hatches (through unsafe) required for these spaces. There are people working in these spaces with Rust successfully, today. So, while, the other languages you mention might find success here as well, there is no reason (from a technical perspective) that Rust will not.