On Monday, 21 January 2013 at 08:09:45 UTC, Jonathan M Davis
wrote:
On Monday, January 21, 2013 08:52:23 Rob T wrote:
If the goal is to increase the popularity of D, and if people
prefer scripted languages over compiled, then a good place to
start is to create an interpreter for D, thus allowing it to be
used as a scripted language, and also retain the ability to be
compiled for optimal performance.
You can already do that. Assuming that dmd is installed in the
right place,
you can make your source file executable, put #!/bin/dmd at the
top of it, and
then run it. It'll be compiled and run. It's not interpreted,
strictly
speaking, but given how fast D compiles and how fast D code
runs once it's
been compiled, it'll be plenty fast.
- Jonathan M Davis
Yes that kind of thing works well in some situations, but there's
more required than that. For example, there are situations where
you want to make a change to a component of a large application
without stopping the entire application. Also there are
situations where an embedded interpreter is critical to the
success of the application.
I think that D almost gets it right, it's close and it does many
things very well, but it still falls short in terms of meeting
all of the major advantages of a scripted language.
--rt
