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digitalmars.D - Why didn't Micro Soft take D as their new language?

reply Vinod K Chandran <kcvinu82 gmail.com> writes:
Why didn't Micro Soft take D as their new language? If they 
wanted a better C, D would have been better than Rust.
Jun 07 2020
next sibling parent mw <mingwu gmail.com> writes:
On Sunday, 7 June 2020 at 20:46:36 UTC, Vinod K Chandran wrote:

 Why didn't Micro Soft take D as their new language? If they 
 wanted a better C, D would have been better than Rust.


The answer is in the neighboring thread

https://forum.dlang.org/post/awmytjxuipxmvpxmwcma forum.dlang.org

Really, can we wake up and face the reality?
Jun 07 2020
prev sibling next sibling parent reply IGotD- <nise nise.com> writes:
On Sunday, 7 June 2020 at 20:46:36 UTC, Vinod K Chandran wrote:

 Why didn't Micro Soft take D as their new language? If they 
 wanted a better C, D would have been better than Rust.


Because Microsoft copies technologies and makes an in house 
version of it. Microsoft did it with Java and called it J++. I 
expect that Microsoft will come with a Rust clone soon, we know 
that they have already started working on that.


the extra work wasn't worth it. Maybe D was too fringe for 
Microsoft to care.
Jun 07 2020
next sibling parent reply Jason <jason01927581wedfksjdf gmail.com> writes:
On Sunday, 7 June 2020 at 21:32:49 UTC, IGotD- wrote:

 On Sunday, 7 June 2020 at 20:46:36 UTC, Vinod K Chandran wrote:

 Why didn't Micro Soft take D as their new language? If they 
 wanted a better C, D would have been better than Rust.


 Because Microsoft copies technologies and makes an in house 
 version of it. Microsoft did it with Java and called it J++. I 
 expect that Microsoft will come with a Rust clone soon, we know 
 that they have already started working on that.


 the extra work wasn't worth it. Maybe D was too fringe for 
 Microsoft to care.


It seems every company would rather create a new language instead 
of adopting one. That's one reason why D will never be "chosen" 
by an organization. Instead, once the major contributors either 
retire or lose interest, D will finally die instead of linger in 
its current comatose state.

RIP
Jun 07 2020
next sibling parent FunkyD <MrFunky YourDaddy.com> writes:
On Sunday, 7 June 2020 at 21:42:12 UTC, Jason wrote:

 On Sunday, 7 June 2020 at 21:32:49 UTC, IGotD- wrote:

 On Sunday, 7 June 2020 at 20:46:36 UTC, Vinod K Chandran wrote:

 Why didn't Micro Soft take D as their new language? If they 
 wanted a better C, D would have been better than Rust.


 Because Microsoft copies technologies and makes an in house 
 version of it. Microsoft did it with Java and called it J++. I 
 expect that Microsoft will come with a Rust clone soon, we 
 know that they have already started working on that.


 the extra work wasn't worth it. Maybe D was too fringe for 
 Microsoft to care.


 It seems every company would rather create a new language 
 instead of adopting one. That's one reason why D will never be 
 "chosen" by an organization. Instead, once the major 
 contributors either retire or lose interest, D will finally die 
 instead of linger in its current comatose state.

 RIP


This is what happens when the leadership thinks meandering is the 
way to go.
Jun 08 2020
prev sibling next sibling parent reply James Lu <jamtlu gmail.com> writes:
On Sunday, 7 June 2020 at 21:42:12 UTC, Jason wrote:

 It seems every company would rather create a new language 
 instead of adopting one. That's one reason why D will never be 
 "chosen" by an organization. Instead, once the major 
 contributors either retire or lose interest, D will finally die 
 instead of linger in its current comatose state.


Python was created by a single person and maintained by a 
community.
It has been adopted by Anaconda Inc, with contributions from teams
at Google (Tensorflow) and Facebook. (Pyre)

Python succeeded because data scientists love it and it's easy to
learn. Perhaps D could go a similar route, by interfacing with
Pandas dataframes and NumPy arrays.
Jun 09 2020
parent jmh530 <john.michael.hall gmail.com> writes:
On Tuesday, 9 June 2020 at 19:03:50 UTC, James Lu wrote:

 [snip]

 Python succeeded because data scientists love it and it's easy 
 to
 learn. Perhaps D could go a similar route, by interfacing with
 Pandas dataframes and NumPy arrays.


It is already possible to interface between D and Python [1]. 
Further, mir has a buffer protocol implementation [2]. It would 
make for a good blog post to provide an example of how to use 
these two together.

[1] https://pyd.readthedocs.io/en/latest/index.html
[2] 
http://mir-algorithm.libmir.org/mir_ndslice_connect_cpython.html
Jun 09 2020
prev sibling parent reply Laeeth Isharc <laeeth laeeth.com> writes:
On Sunday, 7 June 2020 at 21:42:12 UTC, Jason wrote:

 On Sunday, 7 June 2020 at 21:32:49 UTC, IGotD- wrote:

 On Sunday, 7 June 2020 at 20:46:36 UTC, Vinod K Chandran wrote:

 Why didn't Micro Soft take D as their new language? If they 
 wanted a better C, D would have been better than Rust.


 Because Microsoft copies technologies and makes an in house 
 version of it. Microsoft did it with Java and called it J++. I 
 expect that Microsoft will come with a Rust clone soon, we 
 know that they have already started working on that.


 the extra work wasn't worth it. Maybe D was too fringe for 
 Microsoft to care.


 It seems every company would rather create a new language 
 instead of adopting one. That's one reason why D will never be 
 "chosen" by an organization. Instead, once the major 
 contributors either retire or lose interest, D will finally die 
 instead of linger in its current comatose state.

 RIP


In 1958 the average lifespan of a company listed on the S&P 500 
was 61 years.  In 2016 it was less than 18 years.  McKinsey 
believed then that by 2027 75% of companies listed at that time 
will have disappeared.

https://www.imd.org/research-knowledge/articles/why-you-will-probably-live-longer-than-most-big-companies/

What happens to a language that is dominated by the sponsorship 
of a single company if the company disappears?  It is possible 
for it to survive, but it's going to be quite disruptive if the 
company support disappears over quite a short period of time.

Google, for example, has a big cash pile.  But it's core business 
is advertising and according to eBay personalised adverts cost 
10x more, but are only 30% more effective.  What do you suppose 
is going to happen to advertising spend over the next twenty 
years should people become less materialistic, have less 
disposable income and decide that maybe their core product isn't 
worth what they currently do ?  Let's not discuss the appeal of 
such a company to the most talented engineers and how that might 
change.

A language that is vital without large cash infusions from a 
single sponsor is really much more able to survive adverse 
conditions.  It's also better from that point of view if the 
companies that do use it are spread across a range of domains and 
stages of the process of production.

D does have plenty of corporate users:
https://dlang.org/orgs-using-d.html

We are one of them, and I am aiming to hire 20 people to write D 
over the next year or two.



Laeeth
Jun 13 2020
next sibling parent reply James Lu <jamtlu gmail.com> writes:
On Sunday, 14 June 2020 at 06:20:02 UTC, Laeeth Isharc wrote:

 We are one of them, and I am aiming to hire 20 people to write 
 D over the next year or two.



 Laeeth


Do you have any open internships available for students and those
without college degrees?
Jun 14 2020
next sibling parent Andrei Alexandrescu <SeeWebsiteForEmail erdani.org> writes:
On 6/14/20 2:54 PM, James Lu wrote:

 On Sunday, 14 June 2020 at 06:20:02 UTC, Laeeth Isharc wrote:

 We are one of them, and I am aiming to hire 20 people to write D over 
 the next year or two.

 Laeeth


 
 Do you have any open internships available for students and those
 without college degrees?


Yes to internships. (I don't know about the degree requirement.)

I should add that since recently I am also working with Laeeth. 
Obviously, Symmetry comes with my recommendation as a great place to work.
Jun 14 2020
prev sibling next sibling parent Andrei Alexandrescu <SeeWebsiteForEmail erdani.org> writes:
On 6/14/20 2:54 PM, James Lu wrote:

 On Sunday, 14 June 2020 at 06:20:02 UTC, Laeeth Isharc wrote:

 We are one of them, and I am aiming to hire 20 people to write D over 
 the next year or two.

 Laeeth


 
 Do you have any open internships available for students and those
 without college degrees?


Yes to internships. (I don't know about the degree requirement.)

I should add that since recently I am also working with Laeeth. 
Obviously, Symmetry comes with my recommendation as a great place to work.
Jun 14 2020
prev sibling parent Laeeth Isharc <laeeth laeeth.com> writes:
On Sunday, 14 June 2020 at 18:54:54 UTC, James Lu wrote:

 On Sunday, 14 June 2020 at 06:20:02 UTC, Laeeth Isharc wrote:

 We are one of them, and I am aiming to hire 20 people to write 
 D over the next year or two.



 Laeeth


 Do you have any open internships available for students and 
 those
 without college degrees?


Yes - please email laeeth at kaleidic dot io with bio and link to 
GitHub.   Degrees can be valuable in some cases but we don't 
insist on them.
Jun 14 2020
prev sibling parent reply Chris <wendlec tcd.ie> writes:
On Sunday, 14 June 2020 at 06:20:02 UTC, Laeeth Isharc wrote:

 In 1958 the average lifespan of a company listed on the S&P 500 
 was 61 years.  In 2016 it was less than 18 years.  McKinsey 
 believed then that by 2027 75% of companies listed at that time 
 will have disappeared.

 https://www.imd.org/research-knowledge/articles/why-you-will-probably-live-longer-than-most-big-companies/


There might be new companies springing up, which has been quite 
normal in IT over the last couple of years. The fact that 
startups are founded everyday makes it more important for a 
programming language to be in line with industry standards that 
developers expect and depend on (e.g. stability, tooling, 
platform integration).


 What happens to a language that is dominated by the sponsorship 
 of a single company if the company disappears?  It is possible 
 for it to survive, but it's going to be quite disruptive if the 
 company support disappears over quite a short period of time.

 Google, for example, has a big cash pile.  But it's core 
 business is advertising and according to eBay personalised 
 adverts cost 10x more, but are only 30% more effective.  What 
 do you suppose is going to happen to advertising spend over the 
 next twenty years should people become less materialistic, have 
 less disposable income and decide that maybe their core product 
 isn't worth what they currently do ?  Let's not discuss the 
 appeal of such a company to the most talented engineers and how 
 that might change.


Google is always mentioned in this context. However, it's the 
worst example, because everybody knows that one cannot depend on 
any projects started by Google. They might just kill it off next 
year. I don't know exactly why they do it and what their goals 
are, but I'm sure it pays in one way or another (attract 
investors, programmers, whatever). It looks like it's a strategy 
to put it mildly.

But you were talking about (single) company sponsorship. Symmetry 
is one of the two main corporate sponsors of D (the other one is 
Weka.io [1]). Symmetry it is a tech company, it deals with 
financial data. It's only natural that Symmetry's sponsorship 
would have an impact on how D's resources are used, i.e. the 
focus is on what servers Symmetry's interests. After all, 
Symmetry is hiring D programmers, many of them contributors and 
even members of the D Foundation like Tudor Andrei (not sure what 
status Atila Neves has now). This is fine.

On the other hand, people shouldn't wonder why D is not widely 
adopted (as in "Why didn't Microsoft..." etc.). D has become a 
special interest / niche language with a close-knit community, 
there is no room for the "bigger picture", no interest in 
bringing D into a shape that makes it fit for general purpose use 
throughout the IT industry, not just niches.

I only wish you communicated this clearly to the public.


 A language that is vital without large cash infusions from a 
 single sponsor is really much more able to survive adverse 
 conditions.  It's also better from that point of view if the 
 companies that do use it are spread across a range of domains 
 and stages of the process of production.





 D does have plenty of corporate users:
 https://dlang.org/orgs-using-d.html


The list has been quite static for years (very few newcomers).


 We are one of them, and I am aiming to hire 20 people to write 
 D over the next year or two.


Good for you and D programmers. Would you also consider hiring 
programmers to develop tooling and IDE plugins etc for D? In my 
experience crucial parts of D are usually left to a "hero" or 
"champion" who steps up (unpaid of course) or to bounties. How 
about hiring a few programmers to work exclusively on D for a 
year or two?

[1] https://dlang.org/foundation/sponsors.html
Jun 15 2020
parent aberba <karabutaworld gmail.com> writes:
On Monday, 15 June 2020 at 10:11:09 UTC, Chris wrote:

 On Sunday, 14 June 2020 at 06:20:02 UTC, Laeeth Isharc wrote:

 In 1958 the average lifespan of a


 On the other hand, people shouldn't wonder why D is not widely 
 adopted (as in "Why didn't Microsoft..." etc.). D has become a 
 special interest / niche language with a close-knit community, 
 there is no room for the "bigger picture", no interest in 
 bringing D into a shape that makes it fit for general purpose 
 use throughout the IT industry, not just niches.


 [1] https://dlang.org/foundation/sponsors.html


Never knew companies like triplebyte have an interest in D.
Jun 15 2020
prev sibling next sibling parent Paulo Pinto <pjmlp progtools.org> writes:
On Sunday, 7 June 2020 at 21:32:49 UTC, IGotD- wrote:

 On Sunday, 7 June 2020 at 20:46:36 UTC, Vinod K Chandran wrote:

 Why didn't Micro Soft take D as their new language? If they 
 wanted a better C, D would have been better than Rust.


 Because Microsoft copies technologies and makes an in house 
 version of it. Microsoft did it with Java and called it J++. I 
 expect that Microsoft will come with a Rust clone soon, we know 
 that they have already started working on that.


 the extra work wasn't worth it. Maybe D was too fringe for 
 Microsoft to care.


Microsoft is an OpenJDK contributor nowadays and Java has first 
class support on Azure and VSCode.

Rust has been adopted by VSCode, Azure and WinRT/UWP teams 
without MS extras.

They don't need to clone D, given the improvements ISO C++ has 
been getting (in collaboration with other companies like IBM, 



Likewise Google and Apple are adopting Rust, and haven't spent 
one second mentioning D on their latest job offers and roadmaps.

So while it is easy to criticise Microsoft and point to their 
traditional practices, better focus on making a solid story for 
getting D in a proper state first.
Jun 07 2020
prev sibling next sibling parent Vinod K Chandran <kcvinu82 gmail.com> writes:
On Sunday, 7 June 2020 at 21:32:49 UTC, IGotD- wrote:

 Because Microsoft copies technologies and makes an in house 
 version of it. Microsoft did it with Java and called it J++. I 
 expect that Microsoft will come with a Rust clone soon, we know 
 that they have already started working on that.


 the extra work wasn't worth it. Maybe D was too fringe for 
 Microsoft to care.


This is true.
Jun 08 2020
prev sibling parent reply James Lu <jamtlu gmail.com> writes:
On Sunday, 7 June 2020 at 21:32:49 UTC, IGotD- wrote:

 On Sunday, 7 June 2020 at 20:46:36 UTC, Vinod K Chandran wrote:

 Why didn't Micro Soft take D as their new language? If they 
 wanted a better C, D would have been better than Rust.


 Because Microsoft copies technologies and makes an in house 
 version of it. Microsoft did it with Java and called it J++. I 
 expect that Microsoft will come with a Rust clone soon, we know 
 that they have already started working on that.
Jun 09 2020
parent Paulo Pinto <pjmlp progtools.org> writes:
On Wednesday, 10 June 2020 at 01:29:54 UTC, James Lu wrote:

 On Sunday, 7 June 2020 at 21:32:49 UTC, IGotD- wrote:

 On Sunday, 7 June 2020 at 20:46:36 UTC, Vinod K Chandran wrote:

 Why didn't Micro Soft take D as their new language? If they 
 wanted a better C, D would have been better than Rust.


 Because Microsoft copies technologies and makes an in house 
 version of it. Microsoft did it with Java and called it J++. I 
 expect that Microsoft will come with a Rust clone soon, we 
 know that they have already started working on that.





And nowadays they are one of OpenJDK contributors, work alongside 
Red-Hat on VSCode Java support and their Azure Java SDKs have 
feature parity with .NET.

I am still waiting for the Hammer of Justice to sledge Google 
with its Android Java flavour of the month.
Jun 14 2020
prev sibling parent reply Per =?UTF-8?B?Tm9yZGzDtnc=?= <per.nordlow gmail.com> writes:
On Sunday, 7 June 2020 at 20:46:36 UTC, Vinod K Chandran wrote:

 Why didn't Micro Soft take D as their new language? If they 
 wanted a better C, D would have been better than Rust.


Does Microsofts new language have a name?
Jun 07 2020
next sibling parent Paulo Pinto <pjmlp progtools.org> writes:
On Sunday, 7 June 2020 at 22:22:16 UTC, Per Nordlöw wrote:

 On Sunday, 7 June 2020 at 20:46:36 UTC, Vinod K Chandran wrote:

 Why didn't Micro Soft take D as their new language? If they 
 wanted a better C, D would have been better than Rust.


 Does Microsofts new language have a name?


Microsoft Research is looking at

Checked C, https://github.com/Microsoft/checkedc

Verona, https://github.com/microsoft/verona

Both developed as open source projects and far from being used in 
any production over on mother Microsoft.

Meanwhile mother Microsoft is shipping plain standard Rust on 

level stuff), WinRT/UWP bindings and considering support for 
Azure Sphere.
Jun 07 2020
prev sibling parent reply Vinod K Chandran <kcvinu82 gmail.com> writes:
On Sunday, 7 June 2020 at 22:22:16 UTC, Per Nordlöw wrote:


 Does Microsofts new language have a name?


I read that they started using Rust.
Jun 08 2020
next sibling parent reply Liu <liiudk gmail.com> writes:
On Monday, 8 June 2020 at 19:45:59 UTC, Vinod K Chandran wrote:

 On Sunday, 7 June 2020 at 22:22:16 UTC, Per Nordlöw wrote:


 Does Microsofts new language have a name?


 I read that they started using Rust.


Where are they using it?
Jun 08 2020
next sibling parent Paulo Pinto <pjmlp progtools.org> writes:
On Tuesday, 9 June 2020 at 05:33:35 UTC, Liu wrote:

 On Monday, 8 June 2020 at 19:45:59 UTC, Vinod K Chandran wrote:

 On Sunday, 7 June 2020 at 22:22:16 UTC, Per Nordlöw wrote:


 Does Microsofts new language have a name?


 I read that they started using Rust.


 Where are they using it?


Already mentioned on my previous reply, namely VSCode, Azure IoT, 
official UWP/WinRT projection (alongside JS, .NET, Python and 
C++), and possibly a future version of Azure Sphere.
Jun 08 2020
prev sibling parent Vinod K Chandran <kcvinu82 gmail.com> writes:
On Tuesday, 9 June 2020 at 05:33:35 UTC, Liu wrote:

 Where are they using it?


See this Link.
https://msrc-blog.microsoft.com/2019/11/07/using-rust-in-windows/
Jun 09 2020
prev sibling parent reply Liu <liiudk gmail.com> writes:
On Monday, 8 June 2020 at 19:45:59 UTC, Vinod K Chandran wrote:

 On Sunday, 7 June 2020 at 22:22:16 UTC, Per Nordlöw wrote:


 Does Microsofts new language have a name?


 I read that they started using Rust.


where?
Jun 09 2020
parent IGotD- <nise nise.com> writes:
On Tuesday, 9 June 2020 at 17:38:15 UTC, Liu wrote:

 On Monday, 8 June 2020 at 19:45:59 UTC, Vinod K Chandran wrote:

 On Sunday, 7 June 2020 at 22:22:16 UTC, Per Nordlöw wrote:


 Does Microsofts new language have a name?


 I read that they started using Rust.


 where?


As stated earlier in this thread, the project is called Verona.

At the same time Microsoft is starting use Rust as well.
Jun 09 2020