On Saturday, 14 December 2013 at 18:46:50 UTC, Joseph Rushton
Wakeling wrote:
Very curious about what you mean here -- I think most of us
find that D's template syntax is much superior to C++, so I'd
really like to understand what you find problematic.
I dislike the syntax. :-) And well, as far as I can tell I also
dislike the semantics, but it is no worse than C++. I would like
to see a modern language with templates to do it well. That is to
be more in the direction of readable term-rewriting,
pattern-matching with constraints that will make it possible to
do clean operator-overloading etc. More in the direction of
legible Pure, Haskell etc.
Out of curiosity, is this a show-stopper for theoretical
reasons, or did you actually run into practical problems with
the GC?
It is a showstopper because I only do C++ like stuff that is
realtime, like graphics and audio. I use Python for things that
can be done as batch.
I once wrote a D-program to sort my email archives in memory, it
took a while for the GC to kick in, but it got kind of slow…
Still, this was a couple of years ago.
What I want is a programming language that I can write clean code
in and that allows me to have a mental map of how it maps onto
the hardware. C does this, except it does not allow for clean
programming.
I don't think things are actually as spread out as you think.
In reality, there is one compiler frontend that everyone
collaborates on.
You could be right, I am only talking about the impression I am
getting. "The smoke-signals being received from a distance". When
you don't have one excellent compiler, but three in-the-works, it
sends signals of a lack of direction and implies a lack of a
leader that can rally everyone into something cohesive. This is
not a critique of anyone, most programmers want to be creative
and argumentative, not to "nurture", "manipulate" and "wave the
whip" ( I am not even sure I like people who are "great leaders"
;^).
I think it might be worth giving things another spin. If the
last time you tried using D was a couple of years ago, you will
find that things have changed a great deal in terms of
performance, features and general quality.
Let me rephrase what I am perceiving like this: for me D is
currently a solution without a problem.
D is probably a better language than Dart, but Dart is addressing
a real problem: writing programs for browsers that are longer
than 1000 lines without javascript. And it does so by compiling
to javascript. So I am using Dart now. Dart is currently the only
sane solution for web-app programming.
D is probably a better language than Python, but Python has many
great libraries (like importing excel), is available for
AppEngine with fast spin-up, and have a nice interpreter for
experimenting with text-manipulation and code-snippets. So I am
using Python, even though a dynamic language is crap on a server
(runtime errors).
D is probably a better language than Go, but it isn't available
on AppEngine and the Go team is making it work well for web
servers so while it is still in experimental status it probably
will be support fully on AppEngine. So I am spending some time
with Go.
D is probably a better language than C++ in many areas (like
header files!), but I cannot easily and effortlessly get rid of
the GC and I will probably have performance problems with real
time program code (audio is hard realtime, if you don't fill the
buffer you get "pops").
D is certainly a much better language than
Objective-C/Objective-C++, but it won't run on iOS. So when doing
app-programming I'd use Objective-C++ (and do as much as possible
in the C++ part).
The only hobbyist project I have that I would like to use D for
is to do a little bit of experimenting with creating a tiny
hobbyist OS in 64-bit mode, but I have no idea what it takes to
do that with D.
My personal opinion is that D would get much more traction if it
was a true C/C++ replacement. That is to have the same level of
minimal runtime-system/mental-mapping-to-hardware. So, if there
was a tar-ball with a small mini-OS/D-compiler that I could
dabble with I most certainly would give D a spin, but as of today
I see D as a solution with no obvious problem to solve. There is
no "best-application-area" for D, which in turns leads it to not
being the first choice for any given problem even though it
probably is a better language in many areas than the languages
that "win" in their respective areas.
I think the ideal direction for D would be to take clang, rip out
the c++ parser and allow D to interface with (llvm based) C++
seamlessly and to add the ability to generate c++ code from D
code. That way programmers could start integrating D into their
C++ projects with no risk. As of today, I feel that it is better
to just stick to C++ without D, because the risks of using D does
not outweigh the advantages it may provide for me.
Do you think I am unfair?
Ola.
