Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

D Language accepted for inclusion in GCC

gcc.gnu.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

161–170 of 235 posts

Re: D Language accepted for inclusion in GCC

#161

Post by mhh__ »

dgfgfdagasdfgfa wrote: post #150
klickverbot wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> D is arguably in the same bucket as Swift, and partly as Go. I don't think it's very useful to compare and contrast it against Rust. It is easy to claim how things "arguably" are, but without providing any justification that is not a very meaningful statement to make. D very much matches your definition of "low-level, zero-overhead (no GC) etc nature and powerful metaprogramming facilities" – the GC can be avoided…

How is D's memory safety without the GC? How does it guarantee you don't use-after-free, de-ref nulls, buffer overflow, etc?

This is being worked on, but there is already memory safety checks implemented in the compiler (That one can use now) "-dip1000"

Re: D Language accepted for inclusion in GCC

#162

Post by WalterBright »

throwaway7645 wrote: post #157
WalterBright wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> D has not managed to die when it had so many chances to One interesting thing about D is that we don't have to answer to anybody, so nobody can kill D other than us. We just keep steadily pushing forward regardless.

Thanks for the hard work Walter. Random question: I heard D has something like C#'s LINQ. Is that true?

It's D's support for ranges and pipeline programming.

Re: D Language accepted for inclusion in GCC

#163

Post by WalterBright »

kaleidic wrote: post #139
WalterBright wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So far 2017 has been a banner year for D, with the fully open sourcing of it and now the gcc incorporation!

Plus betterC and gpu target.

betterC isn't quite ready yet, but I expect it to be game-changing. The DCompute project (supporting GPUs with D) is a huge deal, too.

Re: D Language accepted for inclusion in GCC

#164

Post by geezerjay »

steveklabnik wrote: post #101
geezerjay wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I'm not mistaken, Rust is being sold as a better C, not C++. Go is being marketed as a higher level language than C and Rust focused on developing network-aware concurrent applications to fill specific server needs. I may be wrong, but I'm not really sure that they target C++ or aim to replace it, unlike D. Perhaps that's the reason why both Rust and Go managed to gain so much traction and goodwill, because they a…

> If I'm not mistaken, Rust is being sold as a better C, not C++. We generally try to market Rust as a good language on its own merits rather than a "better X." That said, there are undoubtably comparisons to make, but the latest iteration of our marketing is "confident, productive systems programming."

Thanks for taking the time to clear that up. Kudos.

Re: D Language accepted for inclusion in GCC

#165

Post by mhh__ »

int_19h wrote: post #129

Is there a D IDE with good code completion and refactoring support? Last time I tried it, all that I've seen were pretty bad at it - handling the simple stuff fine, but breaking down on more complicated stuff, metaprogramming especially (kinda like most C++ IDEs did 8 years ago or so).

Code completion yes. (DCD provides this as a library). d-mode for emacs is nice, both of the plugins for vs-code I know work. There are plugins/extensions for (i think) xcode and (i know) Jetbrains's stuff (I don't use it so i can't really comment.

Refactoring, no.

Edit: There is also a D-specific IDE called coedit, which is pretty good AFAIK

Re: D Language accepted for inclusion in GCC

#167

Post by WalterBright »

jadbox wrote: post #151
eco wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just more pragmatic, I'd say. D isn't a "big agenda language" (to steal a line from Jonathan Blow). It's extremely multi-paradigm (some might argue to a fault). I think that's why you find people saying D is like C++ or D is like C# or D is like Go or D is like Rust. You get a little taste of everything using D. Want function programming and purity? Check. Want C style/low abstraction code? Check. Want extreme C++ me…

What's D's LINQ equivalent?

Ranges and pipeline programming.

Re: D Language accepted for inclusion in GCC

#168

Post by WalterBright »

qznc wrote: post #16
theandrewbailey wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reference compiler got open sourced about 2 months ago. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14060846

The reference compiler is unrelated. The frontend has been Free Software since the beginning. The reference backend was only Open Source (not freely redistributable). So, alternative backends were plugged to the frontend, LLVM and GCC. They all share the same frontend still, although LLVM and GCC slightly lag behind the reference in version (LLVM is nearly in sync). This announcement is official recognition after Iai…

> unrelated

Pedantically, you are correct. But making the whole thing Free Software has cleared up a lot of confusion about this issue, and has undoubtedly helped. Perception matters.

Re: D Language accepted for inclusion in GCC

#169

Post by brokencode »

srcmap wrote: post #155

Human societies seem to evolve to fewer languages. Fewer languages help everyone communicate easier/better. Programming languages seem to go the opposite direction. Any speculation on why?

Maybe because it takes most people hundreds or thousands of hours to learn a natural language, but the average programmer can get a basic understanding of a new programming language over a weekend? Plus, there's arguably no advantage of one natural language over another, whereas different programming languages can make very different tradeoffs.

Re: D Language accepted for inclusion in GCC

#170

Post by cies »

donatj wrote: post #132
int_19h wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it's meaningful to put Swift, Rust and Go in a single bucket when comparing them. They're languages targeting different levels of abstraction, with very different approaches as a result. Some people refer to all of these as "better C++", but it's meant in very different and incomparable ways. For example, Rust is ostensibly a "better C++" in a sense that it retains the low-level, zero-overhead (no GC) e…

I will argue that Go is more of a better C than a better C++

Go is more a better Python. Even simpler syntax. Types and compiles to native (as they are all the fashion now).

Rust is the best bet we have at a better C (and a better low-level C++).

High level C++ competes with D and Go. Rust is a little too specifically targetted at the low level "systems" programming.

Post reply on HN