On Sunday, 18 June 2017 at 10:38:49 UTC, Ecstatic Coder wrote:
Something I really appreciate a lot with D is how close it is
to JavaScript.
For instance, I have to maintain two similar versions of
Pendown, a Markdown alternative for colored documents.
There is a server-side version, in D :
https://github.com/senselogic/PENDOWN/blob/master/pendown.d
And a client-side version, in JavaScript :
https://github.com/senselogic/PENDOWN/blob/master/pendown.js
If you look at both file, you should see how close both files
are.
Thanks to a few methods (charAt, slice, push, pop, etc) added
to the string and array types, when I change a function
implementation in one version, all I have to do is copy-paste
the modifications in the other file and just make a few minor
changes (==/===, ~/+, etc).
Everything else works unchanged : string and array methods
(length, split, join, startsWith, endsWith), closures, etc.
I think that's really AWESOME to have designed the D language
and its standard library in such a way, keeping it so close to
JavaScript, the most used scripting languages on earth !!!
That's why I personally advertise it like a "strongly-typed
super-powered JavaScript", as it is the best scripting language
I know.
Even if D is obviously much more than that, this still
accurately describes what many programmers should feel when
using this fantastic language.
Therefore I think that this closeness is something that should
be advertised much more, so that people know that :
- a JavaScript programmer will immediately feel at home with D;
- porting text manipulation code back and forth between D and
JavaScript is just a breeze.
We should be careful not to make *too* close a comparison. While
Javascript is a necessary evil for web applications and some
people do like it, I get the feeling that it's becoming less and
less liked. It's not quite a fractal of bad design like PHP, but
it has more than a few drastic shortcomings and design flaws.
