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The reference D compiler is now open source

forum.dlang.org

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Re: The reference D compiler is now open source

#21

Post by kbenson »

qznc wrote: post #17
saosebastiao wrote: post #12

This was something that always rubbed me the wrong way about the language, and it was an impediment for adoption for me (for D, but also Shen and a few others). In this era, there is no excuse for a closed source reference compiler (I could care less if it's not a reference compiler, I just won't use it). I'm surprised it took this long to do this, it seems like D has lost most of its relevance by now...relevance it…

D is easier than Rust and safer than C++. That is a valuable point IMHO.

There's a wide range of possibilities int that statement that include the case where you would almost always want D over Rust, and the case where you would almost never want D over Rust.

The question is, how much easier is D than Rust, and how much safer is D than C++.

Re: The reference D compiler is now open source

#23

Post by saosebastiao »

qznc wrote: post #17
saosebastiao wrote: post #12

This was something that always rubbed me the wrong way about the language, and it was an impediment for adoption for me (for D, but also Shen and a few others). In this era, there is no excuse for a closed source reference compiler (I could care less if it's not a reference compiler, I just won't use it). I'm surprised it took this long to do this, it seems like D has lost most of its relevance by now...relevance it…

D is easier than Rust and safer than C++. That is a valuable point IMHO.

I agree it is valuable.

But I still think there are better alternatives now. Depending on your priorities and constraints, OCaml, Go, F#, Scala, and Swift all fit the same description (easier than Rust, safer than C++) and they're in the same realm for performance (slower than C, C++, Rust, etc., but not by much). D could have been there if they had a decade or so with a bigger community.

Re: The reference D compiler is now open source

#24

Post by WalterBright »

jordigh wrote: post #11

Walter, thank you so much for finally doing this! I am so happy that Symantec finally listened. It must have been really frustrating to have to wait so long for this to happen. I have really been enjoying D and I love all the innovation in it. I'm really looking forward to seeing the reference compiler packaged for free operating systems. Thanks again, this news makes me very happy!

You're welcome! It makes me happy, too. I've wanted to do this for a very long time.

Re: The reference D compiler is now open source

#25

Post by WalterBright »

kbenson wrote: post #21
qznc wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

D is easier than Rust and safer than C++. That is a valuable point IMHO.

There's a wide range of possibilities int that statement that include the case where you would almost always want D over Rust, and the case where you would almost never want D over Rust. The question is, how much easier is D than Rust, and how much safer is D than C++.

D recently has been substantially upgraded to prevent memory corruption bugs. I'll be talking about how that works at DConf in 3 weeks.

Re: The reference D compiler is now open source

#26

Post by gmfawcett »

softinio wrote: post #22

Whats special about D? why should i learn it?

Except for perhaps Lisp languages, almost no language makes compile-time computing and code-generation so easy. This allows for some really powerful language features that can be designed as libraries, and puts this power in the hands of "regular developers" rather than only in the hands of template wizards.

Re: The reference D compiler is now open source

#28

Post by qznc »

kbenson wrote: post #21
qznc wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

D is easier than Rust and safer than C++. That is a valuable point IMHO.

There's a wide range of possibilities int that statement that include the case where you would almost always want D over Rust, and the case where you would almost never want D over Rust. The question is, how much easier is D than Rust, and how much safer is D than C++.

There is no quantitative metric for safety and easyness.

If you can afford a garbage collector, D easily wins over Rust. If you really need the safe manual memory management, Rust wins. In between is still a large grey area.

Re: The reference D compiler is now open source

#30

Post by saosebastiao »

qznc wrote: post #28
kbenson wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a wide range of possibilities int that statement that include the case where you would almost always want D over Rust, and the case where you would almost never want D over Rust. The question is, how much easier is D than Rust, and how much safer is D than C++.

There is no quantitative metric for safety and easyness. If you can afford a garbage collector, D easily wins over Rust. If you really need the safe manual memory management, Rust wins. In between is still a large grey area.

There are plenty of reasons why Rust could win outside of requiring safe manual memory management. It is an expression based language with ad-hoc polymorphism, algebraic data types, hygienic macros, first class functions, and race-free concurrency.

I don't use rust because I don't need manual memory management and I require subtype polymorphism for a lot of things, but I choose Scala over D.

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