With regard to having, say, a GUI written with garbage
collection, and then needing to have non-garbage collected code
to process audio, could that not be done with GC D calling C?
And, if there was a garbage-collected D (D for Applications) and
a non-GC D (D for Systems Programming), couldn't one be linked
with the other? And before you say "but it should all be together
coming out of one compiler" - take a moment to Remember the Vasa!
I don't seriously expect two D-ish compilers, but it does seem to
make more sense with regard to adding automatic reference
counting to a language that already has garbage collection, as
well as working to remove garbage collection from the standard
library. Presumably at the beginning and for much of D's history,
garbage collection was a premier selling point, along with OOP.
But with regard to various compile-time stuff and function
annotations and other things that didn't exist years ago, has
that resulted in noticeably faster programming and/or noticeably
higher code quality by those utilizing it?
