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D as a Better C

dlang.org

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111–120 of 193 posts

Re: D as a Better C

#111

Post by adrianN »

saghm wrote: post #15
new299 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really really don't been to pile on Python... but every time I've had to interact with it I've been shocked at how slow it is compared with C or C++. I tend to write scientific code to process datasets in the range on 10Gb, for simple operations Python code can take hours as opposed to just taking minutes or seconds in C. I'm sure it's possible to write more highly optimized code in Python, but it never seems to be…

Python is a high-level interpreted language, and C/C++ are low-level (even compared to other) compiled languages. While you might be able to optimize your Python code to run faster than it does now, it's never going to match the performance of C/C++, nor is it intended to. Go will be a significant speedup over Python, but likely won't quite match the speed of C/C++ for most tasks. Then again, the ease of development…

Javascript is also high-level interpreted language, but it's much faster than Python. Python is pretty hard to optimize in a JIT (and it gets much less attention than Javascript).

Re: D as a Better C

#112

Post by jmh530 »

fithisux wrote: post #92

Now we need another flag to enable a better Java mode. By default D is in better C++ mode.

How about betterC# instead? Given that C++/CLR is a thing, I imagine that it would be possible to get D working on it. JVM is a bit more limited in what it allows vs. CLR. For instance, C# has the unsafe keyword that allows pointer arithmetic, which would correspond to @system in D. @safe D would correspond to the normal C# behavior on that front.

Probably a lot of work though and I'm not sure why anybody would bother.

Re: D as a Better C

#113

Post by jmh530 »

srcmap wrote: post #81

I love to see someone prove D as a Better C by porting the "small" sqlite 124K line of C code to D and run some benchmark/test code against it. I used to work on OO database engine that handles billions of records. I end up rewriting/overloading my own new/delete and redesign everything how data is load/store around it. Shorten the open/close document time from hours to seconds for large documents. Basically, one can…

Could you recommend some resources on these techniques?

Re: D as a Better C

#114

Post by saghm »

adrianN wrote: post #111
saghm wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Python is a high-level interpreted language, and C/C++ are low-level (even compared to other) compiled languages. While you might be able to optimize your Python code to run faster than it does now, it's never going to match the performance of C/C++, nor is it intended to. Go will be a significant speedup over Python, but likely won't quite match the speed of C/C++ for most tasks. Then again, the ease of development…

Javascript is also high-level interpreted language, but it's much faster than Python. Python is pretty hard to optimize in a JIT (and it gets much less attention than Javascript).

True, but it's also miles behind C/C++. While Python is arguably the slowest of the mainstream interpreted language, they're all orders of magnitude slower than C.

Re: D as a Better C

#115

Post by dom96 »

e12e wrote: post #102
dom96 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(Disclaimer: one of the Nim core devs here) Happy to see you paint Nim in a (sort of) positive light, I hope I can help with this one negative. > I liked Nim better in almost every way but one: the compiler was fickle and would just fail silently sometimes. Can you give some examples and elaborate on what you mean by "fail silently"? Did you at least get a segfault?

Since it's already brought up in this thread, I recently had (another) look at nim and was a little disappointed too. It's been a while, but as I recall, on Windows - it was difficult to find a supported way to output Unicode on the console in a sane, portable way (write utf8 nim source code, get wide strings in Windows console and utf8 under eg Linux) - and I think I also had some problems getting off the ground wit…

Indeed there are some bugs with unicode output[1]. Just to be clear the standard way to output anything to the console is `echo` (similar to Python's `print`).

It seems that the progress on that issue has stalled. It's unfortunate but we do have limited man-power and rely on the community to help us out, this does mean that at this stage it helps if you don't mind getting your hands dirty with potential bugs.

Unless one of us are directly affected by a bug, or we see a large number of users affected by it, it's unlikely that we will focus on it. Not much we can do there sadly. I hope you can understand.

Regarding static linking I would say that it's challenging for most languages. Especially on Windows. If you pop into our IRC/Gitter channel[2] though I'm sure somebody would help you out. You can also probably get pretty far by asking C users for help.

Regarding the build system, perhaps you are referring to the fairly recent addition of NimScript? I think that has stabilised by now. But if you've got any specific questions about it then feel free to ask them.

1 - https://github.com/nim-lang/Nim/issues/2348

2 - https://nim-lang.org/community.html

Re: D as a Better C

#116

Post by saghm »

pjmlp wrote: post #104
Keyframe wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like Lisp, though Scheme in particular. However, I have no idea where I would turn to in order to write an application with GUI that needs to be cross-platform and, possibly, derive a mobile version for iOS and Android from the same codebase.

To mocl https://wukix.com/mocl

Given that GP said "cross-platform" and then separately "possible derive mobile", I'm guessing that only supporting OS X on the desktop might not be enough for them. That being said, I'd be very surprised if there weren't cross-platform desktop GUI libraries available for Common Lisp.

Re: D as a Better C

#117

Post by Recurecur »

new299 wrote: post #6
nindalf wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The better Python market isn't an easy one to crack because its a bit crowded. Go (despite its perceived and real faults) has succeeded in this space by delivering better GC, good libraries, static typing and faster programs. Python itself is improving rapidly, for example with the addition of Type Hints. Its pretty difficult to be a better Python in 2017. The better C market, on the other hand, hasn't seen any real…

I really really don't been to pile on Python... but every time I've had to interact with it I've been shocked at how slow it is compared with C or C++. I tend to write scientific code to process datasets in the range on 10Gb, for simple operations Python code can take hours as opposed to just taking minutes or seconds in C. I'm sure it's possible to write more highly optimized code in Python, but it never seems to be…

I suggest taking a long, hard look at Julia.

It's squarely aimed at high performance numerics and scientific programming, but is in fact a general purpose language with great potential. It's already very, very efficient (written using LLVM), yet has a lot of the clean elegance of Python.

Re: D as a Better C

#118

Post by Keyframe »

saghm wrote: post #116
pjmlp wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To mocl https://wukix.com/mocl

Given that GP said "cross-platform" and then separately "possible derive mobile", I'm guessing that only supporting OS X on the desktop might not be enough for them. That being said, I'd be very surprised if there weren't cross-platform desktop GUI libraries available for Common Lisp.

I'd be shocked if WxWidgets weren't supported, maybe even Qt.

Re: D as a Better C

#119

Post by jacquesm »

StevePerkins wrote: post #41
jacquesm wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would hold up Haskell as another counter example to your assertion.

Would you really, though? I can definitely picture some proponents taking enjoyment from their programming language being perceived as inaccessible to the masses. Insofar as it makes them feel more elite for their knowledge of it. But even then, the ego gratification depends on there being a wide audience of people who know "of" the language and its inaccessibility. If people don't know that you're elite, then well..…

Well, you're wrong about Haskell but in the general case you are right.

The idea that the creator of Haskell tried to put forth when he said he did not want the language to be popular was that it would mean losing the freedom to change things. As soon as a programming language achieves general adoption you immediately have the issue of technical debt and backwards compatibility to contend with, which would be a huge drawback in a research language.

It says something about the qualities of Haskell that it achieved substantial popularity in spite of this.

Re: D as a Better C

#120

Post by Keyframe »

pjmlp wrote: post #104
Keyframe wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like Lisp, though Scheme in particular. However, I have no idea where I would turn to in order to write an application with GUI that needs to be cross-platform and, possibly, derive a mobile version for iOS and Android from the same codebase.

To mocl https://wukix.com/mocl

Interesting, but premise seems to be that UI code should be done outside of Lisp. Whereas, at least in my experience, this is where most code and trouble lives.
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