The reference D compiler is now open source • Hacker News Board

Re: The reference D compiler is now open source

#61

Post by loeg » Fri, Apr 07, 2017, 5:52 PM UTC

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.

Is the GC mandatory in D? I was under the impression some time ago that D could run GC-free, but the standard library still widely used GC. Did I just misunderstand?

Re: The reference D compiler is now open source

#62

Post by brakmic » Fri, Apr 07, 2017, 5:53 PM UTC

asimpletune wrote: post #60

brakmic wrote: post #59

Please don't get me wrong, as I don't want to start a flame here, but why do they call D a "systems programming language" when it uses a GC? Or is it optional? I'm just reading through the docs. They do have a command line option to disable the GC but anyway...this GC thing is, imho, a no-go when it comes to systems programming. It reminds me of Go that started as a "systems programming language" too but later switch…

Why does gc disqualify a language as a system's language? P.S. I think of a system's language as one that runs directly on the machine, e.g. Swift, C, go. They operate at the "system" level.

Could one write a driver in D?

Re: The reference D compiler is now open source

#63

Post by WalterBright » Fri, Apr 07, 2017, 5:53 PM UTC

AsyncAwait wrote: post #49

tombert wrote: post #8

Honestly, since I'm slightly psychotic about these things, this is a kind of huge to me. Part of the reason I never learned D was because the compiler was partly proprietary. Now I have no excuse to avoid learning the language, and that should be fun.

I refused to touch Swift until Apple open-sourced it for the same reason :-)

No problemo - dmd works on the Mac :-)

Re: The reference D compiler is now open source

#64

Post by interestingemu » Fri, Apr 07, 2017, 5:54 PM UTC

jacques_chirac wrote: post #37

saosebastiao wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Neither Rust nor Scala hold a candle to D in terms of compile-time introspection. You can do things with it that are near unbelievable - "you must ask yourself if some law of nature was broken" quoted from memory in http://dconf.org/2015/talks/alexandrescu.html

Scala developers can do whatever they want or need at compile-time.

Re: The reference D compiler is now open source

#65

Post by petre » Fri, Apr 07, 2017, 5:55 PM UTC

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.

And it also interfaces very nicely with C/C++ libraries and code.

Re: The reference D compiler is now open source

#66

Post by Keyframe » Fri, Apr 07, 2017, 5:56 PM UTC

brakmic wrote: post #62

asimpletune wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why does gc disqualify a language as a system's language? P.S. I think of a system's language as one that runs directly on the machine, e.g. Swift, C, go. They operate at the "system" level.

Could one write a driver in D?

Yes

Re: The reference D compiler is now open source

#67

Post by WalterBright » Fri, Apr 07, 2017, 5:56 PM UTC

zerr wrote: post #51

Anybody worked on performance critical stuff in D? How good is its GC?

The performance of D is the same as that for the corresponding C/C++ program in the corresponding compiler.

    dmd and Digital Mars C++
    gdc and gcc
    ldc and clang

Re: The reference D compiler is now open source

#68

Post by qznc » Fri, Apr 07, 2017, 5:57 PM UTC

jordigh wrote: post #48

jacques_chirac wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's plenty you can do with D but not C++, see regex, bitfields, swap member-by-member with checks for mutual pointers, the pegged library for grammars, etc etc.

I don't know, Boost has me convinced that even things like regexes in C++ templates could be possible, if your compiler has a big enough stack to handle very deep template recursions. It's theoretically possible to build a regex parser in C++ templates, right? It would be horrible, but possible.

With D it is possible and not horrible and already done. ;)

Talk: http://dconf.org/2014/talks/olshansky.html

Re: The reference D compiler is now open source

#69

Post by brakmic » Fri, Apr 07, 2017, 5:58 PM UTC

Keyframe wrote: post #66

brakmic wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could one write a driver in D?

Yes

Thanks!

Still reading the docs....D seems to have a very clean design. No baggage from some "glorious" past (70es, PDP, IBM 360 etc).

Re: The reference D compiler is now open source

#70

Post by steveklabnik » Fri, Apr 07, 2017, 5:59 PM UTC

loeg wrote: post #61

qznc wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Is the GC mandatory in D? I was under the impression some time ago that D could run GC-free, but the standard library still widely used GC. Did I just misunderstand?

In my understanding, you're overall correct, but they've also been working on reducing that need, making more and more of it work without a GC.