On 02/09/2018 05:55 PM, H. S. Teoh wrote:
When I found D, I had already been chafing for *years* under the hell that C++ development was, but could not stand the thought of moving to Java, because it was just (1) too verbose, and (2) not powerful enough to express what I want. (That was in the days before Java generics... though even with generics, I doubt I would've been convinced. It's just ... not quite "there" in terms of expressive power.)
After beginning mainly with various BASICs, I started learning about game development which, at the time, meant C (and "C++ as a C-with-classes"). So I was pretty deeply into C/C++ stockholm-syndromne for a good long while, just 'cause I didn't know any better.
Then a crop of new (at the time) features of C++ started perplexing me, but I still didn't know much better. At that point, I was in college at the height of the Java craze, so when I inevitably tried Java (v2), it was eye-opening: Ruined me on much of C++ almost instantly, and simultaneously ruined me on Java itself due to chafing at everything it deliberately couldn't do. Nearly ruined me on programming until a search for a happy-middle language led me to a very early D (not long after templates IIRC, but WELL before v1.0), and I was like "Yes! *This* is what I wanted!" :)
Nothing else ever lived up since. (C#, and later Nemerle, came close, but no proverbial cigar.)
