On Friday, 14 January 2022 at 02:13:48 UTC, H. S. Teoh wrote:
It takes 10x the effort to write a shell-script substitute in
C++ because at every turn the language works against me -- I
can't avoid dealing with memory management issues at every turn
-- should I use malloc/free and fix leaks / dangling pointers
myself? Should I use std::autoptr? Should I use
std::shared_ptr? Write my own refcounted pointer for the 15th
time? Half my APIs would be cluttered with memory management
paraphrenalia, and half my mental energy would be spent
fiddling with pointers instead of MAKING PROGRESS IN MY PROBLEM
DOMAIN.
With D, I can work at the high level and solve my problem long
before I even finish writing the same code in C++.
Well C++ ships with unique_ptr and shared_ptr, you don't have to
roll your own. And you can use them and be assured that the
performance profile of your program doesn't suddenly collapse
when the data/heap grows too big as these tools assure
independence of the heap size. (What does D's GC assure you? That
it won't run if you don't use it? That's such a low bar...)
Plus with D you cannot really work at the "high level" at all, it
is full of friction. Is this data const? Or immutable? Is this
@safe? @system? Should I use @nogc? Are exceptions still a good
idea? Should I use interfaces or inheritance? Should I use class
or struct? Pointers or inout? There are many languages where it's
much easier to focus on the PROBLEM DOMAIN. Esp if the domain is
"shell-script substitute".
