On Thursday, 30 June 2016 at 23:48:29 UTC, Mike Parker wrote:
DMD *is* the official compiler. That's what a reference compiler is. The other compilers are there for those who want them and are developed independently of DMD. It's no different from the situation with Java (with the exception that Oracle doesn't link to other compilers on their JDK download page). No one says you *have* to use LDC or GDC for production, or that you can't use DMD. It's just as a recommendation for those who care about squeezing out every last drop of performance.
Sure, but overwhelmingly the community suggests to use DMD for development for fast compilation speeds and then use LDC/GDC for production. I'm not saying that the law mandates it but the impression I get as a newcommer to the community is that DMD is the ugly stepchild that isn't suitable for real world use case.
As an example, look at whenever a benchmark comes up, someone will say "have you tried compiling with LDC?". I feel the is relevant since, as a systems language, performance should be a feature.
