My (likely unfair) impression of D is that it feels a bit rudderless: It is trying to be too many things to too many people, and as a consequence it doesn't really stand out compared to the languages that commit to a paradigm.

Do you want GC? Great! Do not want GC? Well, you can turn it off, and lose access to most things. Do you want a borrow-checker? Great, D does that as well, though less wholeheartedly than Rust. Do you want a safer C/memory safety? There's the SafeD mode. And probably more that I forget.

I wonder if all these different (often incompatible) ways of using D ends up fragmenting the D ecosystem, and in turn make it that much harder for it to gain critical mass

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cardanome an hour ago | parent | next [-]

> My (likely unfair) impression of D is that it feels a bit rudderless

The more positive phrasing would be that it is a very pragmatic language. And I really like this.

Currently opinionated langues are really in vogue. Yes they are easier to market but I have personally very soured on this approach now that I am a bit older.

There is not one right way to program. It is fun to use on opinionated language until you hit a problem that it doesn't cover very well and suddenly you are in a world of pain. I like languages that give me escape hatches. That allow me to program they way I want to.

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DeathArrow 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

>My (likely unfair) impression of D is that it feels a bit rudderless: It is trying to be too many things to too many people, and as a consequence it doesn't really stand out compared to the languages that commit to a paradigm.

Nim kind of does that, too.

	▲	cb321 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		This can very clearly be said about C++ as well, which may have started out as C With Classes but became very kitchen sinky. Most things that get used accrete a lot of features over time, though. FWIW, I think "standing out" due to paradigm commitment is mostly downstream of "xyz-purity => fewer ways to do things => have to think/work more within the constraints given". This then begs various other important questions, of course.. E.g., do said constraints actually buy users things of value overcoming their costs, and if so for what user subpopulations? Most adoption is just hype-driven, though. Not claiming you said otherwise, but I also don't think the kind of standing out you're talking about correlates so well to marketing. E.g., browsers marketed Javascript (which few praised for its PLang properties in early versions).