On Sat, Mar 11, 2023 at 04:21:40PM +0000, bomat via Digitalmars-d-learn wrote: [...] > Although I come from a C++ background, I'm not exactly a fanboy of > that language (you can probably tell, otherwise I wouldn't be here). > But after hearing praise for D for being a cleaner and better version > of C/C++, I am a bit disappointed so far, tbh. I don't want to go into > too much detail here to not derail the thread entirely, but I think it > repeats too many old sins, like implicit type conversions, the `for` > loop syntax (although I guess one wouldn't need it that often because > of `foreach`), the `switch` `case` fallthrough, and the cancerous > `const` (as far as I can tell, `immutable` is an even worse flavor of > it). [...]
I also came from a C/C++ background. The GC turned me off D for a long time, until one day I decided to just give it a try to see if it was all as bad as people made it sound. I have to admit that GC phobia stuck with me for a long time, but once I actually started using the language seriously, I discovered to my surprise that it wasn't *that* big of a deal as I had thought. In fact, I found that I quite liked it, because it made my APIs cleaner. A LOT cleaner because I didn't have to pollute every function call with memory management paraphrenalia; they can be nice and clean with no extraneous detritus and things Just Work(tm). Also, the amount of time/effort spent (i.e., wasted) debugging memory problems was gone, and I was a LOT more productive than I ever was in C++. True, I have to relinquish 100% control of my memory, and as an ex-C++ fanboy I totally understand that it's not a pleasant feeling. But I have to say that I was pleasantly surprised at how much D's GC *didn't* get in my way, once I actually started using it for real (toy examples can be misleading). Why am I saying all this? Because to be frank, you haven't really used D if you've been avoiding its standard library like the plague. Not all of Phobos is GC-dependent; the range-based stuff, for example, lets you avoid GC use most of the time. True, for exceptions you need GC, but exceptions are supposed to be ... exceptions ... not the norm, and in practice it isn't really *that* big of a deal. You shouldn't be catching exceptions inside performance-sensitive inner loops anyway. D's strong points don't really show until you start using range-based stuff with UFCS chains -- now *that's* power. Even if you dislike the GC you can still mostly manage your own memory, and let the GC be the fallback mechanism for stuff you missed. As for implicit type conversions: I don't know where you got your information from, but D's implicit conversions are a WHOLE different world from C++. Walter has resisted adding implicit conversion mechanisms in spite of harsh criticism and constant pressure, and in practice, you aren't gonna see a lot of it in D code, if at all. It's not even close to C++ where SFINAE + Koenig lookup gang up on you from behind and you don't even know what hit you. Issues with implicit conversions in D only really come up if you go out of your way to abuse alias this and/or use short ints a little too zealously. Otherwise in practice it's not even an issue IME. For-loop syntax: I can't remember the last time I wrote one in D. Maybe I did like 1 or 2 times (across my 20+ D projects) when I really needed to do something weird with my loops. But foreach covers 90% of my looping needs, and while loops take care of the 9.9% of the cases. Besides, once you start getting used to UFCS chains and Phobos algorithms, most of the time you won't even be writing any loops at all. You won't believe how much more readable your code becomes when you can finally stop worrying about pesky fragile loop conditions and just tack on a couple more components to your UFCS chain and it just automagically takes care of itself. Again, not something you'll understand if you never tried to use D in a serious way. I recommend actually trying to write D, not as transplanted C++, but the way D code is meant to be written. As for switch: yeah D switch has some crazy parts (like Duff's device -- you can actually write that in D). But I've never needed to use it... also, final switch + enums = awesome. As for const: I hardly ever use it. It's useful occasional for low-level code, but not much beyond that. My advice: don't bother. Just pretend it doesn't exist, and your life will be happier. Well OK, once in a while you do need to deal with it. But if it were me, I'd avoid it unless I have to. It doesn't mix well with high-level code, I'll put it that way. Immutable is the same thing, I only use it as `static immutable` just so the compiler would put my data in the preinitialized segment. Other than that, I don't bother. T -- If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.
