On Tuesday, 11 February 2014 at 19:43:00 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:
I've toyed with this idea for a while, and wondered what the
interest there is in something like this.
The idea is to be able to use a subset of D that does not
require any of druntime or phobos - it can be linked merely
with the C standard library. To that end, there'd be a compiler
switch (-betterC) which would enforce the subset.
(First off, I hate the name "better C", any suggestions?)
The subset would disallow use of any features that rely on:
1. moduleinfo
2. exception handling
3. gc
4. Object
I've used such a subset before when bringing D up on a new
platform, as the new platform didn't have a working phobos.
What do you think?
I think a D subset language would be great.
We currently used D in a similar manner at work. Myself and a
colleague often use D to prototype C/C++ code and then manually
ported it across. The manual port imposes very tight constraints
on what we can use from D but it is still better than C.
Even with the manual porting effort it speeds up development. The
D compiler catches subtle bugs that creep into C code when
deadlines are tight and the porting itself is great as a review
process.
Cheers,
ed
