Has there been any new books out there to learn D? I have one that still references the Collection Wars (Phobos vs Native). Once I saw that, I put the book back on the shelf and stuck with Java.
The reference D compiler is now open source
141–150 of 313 posts
Re: The reference D compiler is now open source
#142Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think it's common to avoid the GC in performance critical sections of your code. D's version of BLAS is faster[1] and avoids the GC completely. [1] http://blog.mir.dlang.io/glas/benchmark/openblas/2016/09/23/...
consistently beating OpenBLAS and having performance comparable with MKL is seriously impressive. I'm wondering how that is possible. I assume it's using the same algorithms as other implementations, so the credit goes to the compiler (and to the language to some extent). But the D compiler just uses LLVM for the back end, so is this because LDC produces really good LLVM IR, or is LLVM really good at generating assem…
You can get some information from this comment[1] by the author as well as his others on that thread. This is somewhat outside of my area.
[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/54kg6v/numeric...
Re: The reference D compiler is now open source
#143Earlier quoted context omitted.
What do you consider as "fad languages"?
Not going to start a flame war. Everyone has their opinions, However there are languages that come and go, and then are swift to become popular, but then are left to rust, because people stopped having smalltalk about them.
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Re: The reference D compiler is now open source
#144Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
There are many languages that fit certain general descriptions, but that doesn't mean that the experience of using them will lead me to think they are at all comparable in terms of how well they help me solve the kind of problems I face. Go and Scala - I somehow dont think they are close substitutes for each other. The kind of person that likes D's generics will not be the kind that is ultra happy with Go. The kind that likes the short learning curve and plethora of network libraries in Go might not be thrilled by D early experience. It all depends.
Re: The reference D compiler is now open source
#145Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Why does gc disqualify a language as a system's language? AFAIK a "system programming language" should have deterministic performances, obviously Go hasn't. But different people might define "systems" differently.
The people who define Go as a "systems language" use their own terribly useless definition of "systems language". Per wiki: "For historical reasons, some organizations use the term systems programmer to describe a job function which would be more accurately termed systems administrator." So for them, a language that can be used by DevOps Engineers is a systems language. While for sane developers, a systems language i…
I.e. one you can code "a system" in
Yeah, but "a system" doesn't necessarily mean "an operating system". There are lots of kinds of systems. Most people I know, who I've talked about this with, consider middlware'ish development (think, message queuing systems, application servers, etc.) as an aspect of "systems programming".
Re: The reference D compiler is now open source
#146This 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…
This is exactly my thought. I was really excited about D1 at the time when there were no Go/Rust/Swift/... I called D the C++ should be. I recommended D to almost everyone. They liked it. Some of them even wrote non-trivial programs in D. However, all of them went back to C/C++ later during the painful D1 to D2 transition amidst unnecessary clashes. It was a mess IMHO, which deeply hurt D's adoption. D2 managed to re…
Hi... You have a superb blog. Somebody right now on forum is trying to port your hash map code BTW. Yes past is a shame, though it's momentum relative to itself that matters for a language more than versus others. If Go takes off for network services it doesn't particularly hurt D, because total market is so big. Language has really taken off past years, and I use it within a hedge fund environment. Work with some refugees from C/c++ - we couldn't imagine returning to those languages for what we use D for.
One sample project we built for internal use is here: https://github.com/kaleidicassociates/excel-d/blob/add64bit/...
Re: The reference D compiler is now open source
#147Good to hear the news, and congrats to all involved.
Since I see some comments in this thread, asking what D can be used for, or why people should use D, I'm putting below, an Ask HN thread that I had started some months ago. It got some interesting replies:
Ask HN: What are you using D (language) for?
Re: The reference D compiler is now open source
#148Walter, 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!
I don't understand: I thought Walter owned the copyright, why does Symantec have anything to do with it?
Re: The reference D compiler is now open source
#149Earlier quoted context omitted.
Also, how does D compare to Rust? (If I'm going to learn a new system programming language, which one should I pick?)
Favorably. Pick D.
What kind of support problems did you have? I found the opposite. It was possible to get such a good level of programmer from the community I was better off having found them letting them go work for the D Foundation on rebuilding compile time function execution. Libraries - meaning a bit more work to have idiomatic style use, but if you write D as C, that's usually okay - and wrapping is a one time cost.
I would say that I have found it to be more of a problem on Windows. That'd because the general C/C++ package management solution on Windows is quite... Old fashioned, and that's not always a D specific problem.
Re: The reference D compiler is now open source
#150Earlier 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?
You can tag a block @nogc, if you just need to avoid it for a specific part of your program. This can be done with the whole program, but quite a lot of the standard library requires the GC.
I should point out that the GC has no problems that affect day to day usage, the stuff people complain about is when it's running for a while (it's conservative atm so it leaks).