On Wednesday, 3 January 2018 at 22:28:15 UTC, Jonathan M Davis
wrote:
So, if no one speaks up about how it's actually great to have a
GC, it starts seeming like we all think that D shouldn't have a
GC, which isn't the case at all.
- Jonathan M Davis
Having GC is awesome, it's like driving a luxury car with all the
comfort and safety on highways. But also there is need for raw
powerful cars which can be driven off-roads, accepting the
risks, to haul metal and lumber to civilization, to build
infrastructure.
Now my perception is that D tries hard to be both, with some
regrettable consequences. Started as a GC language with language
features which depend on GC, and a std which was done for a GC
language and has dependency on GC. But it also envied
the cars which can be driven off roads, so it allowed GC to be
disabled. At the cost of being unable to use parts of the
language, and whole parts of std. Then it got even more envious
and got a -betterC mode whose raison d'etre is unclear, apart
from some people saying it's Walter's toy, which crippled D even
more, and made std a dubious proposition until someone goes
through it step by step and see the traps.
This could have been solved in 2 ways imo (hindsight )
1. Commit to GC , implement state of the art collector and be
happy ever after
2. Go 0 abstraction route. Keep core language independent of GC
and have std not depending on it. Then add GC support with the
ability to completely disable it with a compiler switch from
runtime.
