jim_g Wrote: > Jonathan M Davis Wrote: > > > On Saturday 29 January 2011 21:45:33 jim_g wrote: > > > Hello > > > > > > I'm currently doing business with 4 commercial applications on Android > > > 2.1+ > > > and iPhone 3GS+. One of the current problems is that we're facing the > > > limits of performance especially when developing Java which is interpreted > > > on the oldest hardware. Thanks to reddit I read about D recently and it > > > seems to hit the head of the nail squarely. I've used to think that more > > > performance means less "power" in the language when thinking in ways of > > > simplicity (easy to read), high level language features (nameless > > > functions) and so on. BUT D has it all in a nice package and solves all > > > these issues. > > > > > > My question is, how well does D support ARMv6 and ARMv7? I'd like to make > > > full use of auto-vectorization and inlining when doing foreach loops, > > > iterators with inline predicates, and array operations. Our problem with C > > > on ARM is that many compilers are still far from good. We wouldn't want to > > > buy a commercial compiler unless it's really worth its salt. Reading this > > > newsgroup revealed that D uses some kind of thing called 'lowerings' for > > > optimizing high level features. Does this avoid all these complex bugs? > > > > > > Another question is, does D have any tutorials for building stuff on ARM? > > > Any Android/iOS bindings anywhere? Has anyone done any Android/iPhone > > > development in D? Would you recommend D instead of C/C++ for these > > > platforms? If not, how long will it take before D beats C/C++ on these > > > platforms? How I see it is there's not much time left to earn big money on > > > these. Some popular applications already become (adware) free because of > > > piracy and competition. > > > > gdc or LDC might be able to build for ARM. I don't know. But dmd is x86 > > only > > (with x86_64 on the way). So, at the moment, you're not going to be able to > > build for ARM using dmd. I suspect that gdc can do it, since it's using gcc > > for > > its backend, but I don't know. > > > > There's probably a good chance that dmd will support ARM _eventually_ - as > > long > > as there's sufficient demand for it - but I doubt that it will any time > > soon. I > > expect that there are too many other things that need to be done for it to > > be a > > high priority at the moment. > > > > - Jonathan M Davis > > Thanks for the reply. In my opinion this is a huge shame. The x86 market is > oversaturated with languages, but if you're doing something "exotic", there's > only C/C++. Btw ARM isn't especially exotic. Most portable devices except > laptops have used it for years. While there are many language platforms for > smartphones, for example Java, C#, Obj-C, C, C++, JavaScript, and Python, > none of these are especially high level and performance oriented at the same > time.
What I tried to say is, in my opinion, a language with only a half or a quarter of D's improvements over C++ would be more successful on smartphone/tablet platforms than yet another x86 oriented language, no matter how good. The killer feature is to be in the right place and the right time. = jim =
