On Thu, 15 Apr 2010 15:41:20 -0400, bearophile <[email protected]> wrote: > > Don: > > >And really, D doesn't need many people working on the DMD compiler.< > > I agree, it's like having many people working around a dead corpse trying to > revive it. Better use the time to adopt gcc and llvm back-ends at their best, > keeping in mind, while designing D, that there are features that those > back-ends have and the dmd back-end doesn't have that it will be good to add > to the language. Simple example: refusing computed gotos because they are a > lot of work to implement is not a justification that holds if both gcc and > llvm already implement them and allow the front-end to just use them in a simple enough way. > > Bye, > bearophile
I like DMD, personally, and I've liked the benchmarks that I've seen of it (although lack of PowerPC support saddens me). GCC is a behemoth according to anyone who's ever done any work with it, and I like DMD's official status... even if LDC (for instance) were to become the "official" D compiler, the D compilation is so dependent on the LLVM system that it'd probably eventually run into issues like what Apple had with GCC not doing what they wanted; in Apple's case, they started a new project (clang, for those not familiar) so they could have solid control over the codebase. As far as computed gotos, I think Walter explains somewhere on the D website that D should be an easy language for compiler writers to implement. I don't know the relative implementation difficulty of computed gotos, but I think the rationale for minimizing features actually in the compiler itself is sound. Reduces feature creep and all that good stuff.
