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> Good luck to these guys on trying to bring life back to it, but frankly I think at this point most people have given up and moved on to alternatives like Rust

> Good luck to these guys on trying to bring life back to it, but frankly I think at this point most people have given up and moved on to alternatives like Rust, Nim, Zig, etc... And back in 2015, folks were saying the same thing, but with different alternative languages. I remember twenty years ago when C++ was dead. Oh, and remember the good old days when Java was dead? I'm not sure why programming language discussions always turn into quantitative statements that have no data, but fully support the commenter's position.

IshKebab 3y ago
Because it's not very difficult to lurk on forums like this and get a pretty accurate idea of which programming languages are on the way in or out. Or look at GitHub/Stackoverflow surveys and data if you want something quantitative. I don't think many people thought C++ was dead 20 years ago; that seems like revisionism. Same with Java. People looking for a C++ replacement have definitely moved on to Rust, Zig and maybe Go & Nim. Not D. I don't see how you could seriously argue otherwise. Some languages are pretty easy to predict, e.g. Ruby is going to decline quite quickly. C++ is going to stick around for a long time because of its current enormous usage. PHP will probably stick around for a while but slowly decline like Visual Basic and Perl. Rust is going to gain in popularity for a long time and probably stick around for a very long time. Some are more difficult to predict. I'm not sure what will happen to Go or Nim for example.
- bachmeier 3y ago
  > I don't think many people thought C++ was dead 20 years ago Sure they did. Bjarne was in that camp. That's why C++11 came out, and the C++ of 20 years ago is dead. > Same with Java. It was very common to hear comments like "The JVM is great, but Java is terrible. Use Scala, Clojure, [language of the month]." > People looking for a C++ replacement have definitely moved on to Rust, Zig and maybe Go & Nim. Not D. I don't see how you could seriously argue otherwise. Do you have some numbers on how many moved to Zig and Nim? I'm not looking for "I've seen comments on the internet" but actual numbers. I'd expect it to be rounding error relative to the population of C++ users. And I seriously doubt the numbers would be very high for Go. But the point still stands that people have been saying this about D for a gazillion years. It might be more credible if they'd at least change the story up a bit when they say it.
Shorel 3y ago
You just refreshed this memory for me: I remember 25 years ago when StarCraft was dead and Age of Empires was it. It happened at the same moment my university switched from C++ to Java. I hated that change. And I remember 15 years ago when the biggest e-sports events in the world were done using StarCraft. Today I am back in university, and we are using C++. =)

IshKebab 3y ago

Because it's not very difficult to lurk on forums like this and get a pretty accurate idea of which programming languages are on the way in or out. Or look at GitHub/Stackoverflow surveys and data if you want something quantitative. I don't think many people thought C++ was dead 20 years ago; that seems like revisionism. Same with Java. People looking for a C++ replacement have definitely moved on to Rust, Zig and maybe Go & Nim. Not D. I don't see how you could seriously argue otherwise. Some languages are pretty easy to predict, e.g. Ruby is going to decline quite quickly. C++ is going to stick around for a long time because of its current enormous usage. PHP will probably stick around for a while but slowly decline like Visual Basic and Perl. Rust is going to gain in popularity for a long time and probably stick around for a very long time. Some are more difficult to predict. I'm not sure what will happen to Go or Nim for example.

bachmeier 3y ago
> I don't think many people thought C++ was dead 20 years ago Sure they did. Bjarne was in that camp. That's why C++11 came out, and the C++ of 20 years ago is dead. > Same with Java. It was very common to hear comments like "The JVM is great, but Java is terrible. Use Scala, Clojure, [language of the month]." > People looking for a C++ replacement have definitely moved on to Rust, Zig and maybe Go & Nim. Not D. I don't see how you could seriously argue otherwise. Do you have some numbers on how many moved to Zig and Nim? I'm not looking for "I've seen comments on the internet" but actual numbers. I'd expect it to be rounding error relative to the population of C++ users. And I seriously doubt the numbers would be very high for Go. But the point still stands that people have been saying this about D for a gazillion years. It might be more credible if they'd at least change the story up a bit when they say it.

Shorel 3y ago

You just refreshed this memory for me: I remember 25 years ago when StarCraft was dead and Age of Empires was it. It happened at the same moment my university switched from C++ to Java. I hated that change. And I remember 15 years ago when the biggest e-sports events in the world were done using StarCraft. Today I am back in university, and we are using C++. =)