171–180 of 235 posts
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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?
Great question! The answer is a bit more than a simple reply can do, so: Pointers Gone Wild: Memory Safety and D http://dconf.org/2017/talks/bright.html
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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?
auto names = [ "Burke", "Connor", "Frank", "Everett", "Albert", "George", "Harris", "David"];
names.filter!(a => a.length == 5)
.array // convert from lazy range to array so we can sort
.sort!()
.map!(a => a.asUpperCase)
.joiner("\n")
.writeln;
UFCS lets you call a function as if it were a member of the first parameter (i.e. fun(x, y) -> x.fun(y)). This lets you write it as if it were chain rather than a series of inside out function calls (i.e. `writeln(joiner(map!(a => asUpperCase(a)(sort!()(array(filter!(a => a.length == 5)(names)))), "\n"))`).
There is exactly two memory allocations in all of that. Once for the initial array and again prior to sorting because it's not reasonable to sort a lazy range. We could have reused the initial array by eagerly removing the items being filtered from it if we wanted.
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
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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…
> I'm not really sure that they target C++ or aim to replace it, unlike D. The evolution of both Go's and Rust's strategies as "replacement" languages is actually pretty interesting. While Go's official marketing no longer calls it a systems language, the use of that phrase when Go was originally released does indicate that that they envisioned Go to be a "better C" in a sense (perhaps specifically in the sense of be…
is that true? Old versions of Rust looked like Go, IMO.
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Most people I know have not heard of D, but have definitely heard of Go, Swift and (less often, but still frequently) Rust. If in 16 years D has not achieved mass adoption, what is different now, when there are more competitors that offer better features?
It's a big world out there. Would you ever imagine that D would be taking market share from... Extended Pascal? But there's a naval architect who designs great big ships with a 500k sloc codebase he is exploring porting to D. Web guys get the attention but enterprise users are a much bigger world than just that. If something is growing very quickly then saying it hasn't yet dethroned C, so it won't ever be significan…
From what I have seen of D, it provides a C++ without some of the cruft, but without trying to solve other issues with C++-like languages (for eg: usefulness of Algebraic Data Types). Why should someone choose D today over Go or Rust for any project? I have yet to see a convincing answer.
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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
Also a visual studio plugin
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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…
> 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…
If not, then I would posit that it's not correct to say that it matches my definition.
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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.
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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…
> Others are "something better than C++ for most apps you'd write in C++ today". As big C++ fan and language geek, I am pretty confident that if Java and .NET had taken the route of all other alternatives in the 90's (Oberon, Eiffel, Modula-3, Delphi,...), C and C++ would be less relevant today than they turned out to be. This because many people make use of them, just because they are the only languages they know ab…