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D 2.096 and other news

dlang.org

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Re: D 2.096 and other news

#41

Post by qznc »

djwatson24 wrote: post #39
z77dj3kl wrote: post #11

The more time I spend with Python, the more it seems to me that a language defined abstractly and having multiple implementations (none "official") seems to be the healthiest compared to one with a reference compiler/interpreter. D seems to have one "reference compiler" and just a "reference manual".

D has three fully functional compilers on Linux, and is probably in better shape than python, rust, even c++ in that regard.

There is only one frontend though.

The advantage of multiple compilers is that people find subtle differences which humans miss by only reading the spec. Since D has only one frontend, it does not get that benefit although it can technically claim to have three compilers.

Re: D 2.096 and other news

#42

Post by p0nce »

z77dj3kl wrote: post #11

The more time I spend with Python, the more it seems to me that a language defined abstractly and having multiple implementations (none "official") seems to be the healthiest compared to one with a reference compiler/interpreter. D seems to have one "reference compiler" and just a "reference manual".

This is a valid criticism; yet a spec is "code" that has to be maintained and created, so in the context of open source someone has to do it. An ISO-quality spec needs a lot of efforts to happen.

Thing have been getting slowly better over time, with this small specification: https://dlang.org/spec/intro.html

Re: D 2.096 and other news

#43

Post by MaxBarraclough »

crazypython wrote: post #15
Decabytes wrote: post #13

I ended up playing around with D for a bit before moving to Rust and here were my thoughts Pros 1. It felt very practical. 2. Handling packages using Dub was great 3. The D programming book by Ali Çehreli was a great introduction http://ddili.org/ders/d.en/index.html 4. A lot of criticism around D were outdated. Whenever you search stuff about D you still find people talking about the split, disabling the GC invalida…

> 5. The forum is very helpful, and I was able to get my issues fixed without anyone telling me to RTFM or being mean D forum is one of the most gracious and nice. There is a lot of gratitude.

They also really know their stuff. I suppose that's an advantage of all less mainstream languages and tools, but D's community is particularly impressive.

Another way of putting it: in the C++ community, the average person on a forum is never going to have a seat on the C++ standards commitee. They'll never even get close. With a smaller community like with D, you can find forum threads where the forum regulars are discussing the future of the language, and the discussion really has weight on D's evolution.

Re: D 2.096 and other news

#44

Post by p0nce »

Kranar wrote: post #14
throwaway316943 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like it’s perfectly suited for indie game development where everything plus the kitchen sink is a must and the more customizable the better.

That's an excellent point actually. I think as a language D could work well for indie games but even there... if you're an indie developer do you go with D or with Unity (which uses C#)? That said, in principle one could imagine a version of Unity that used D instead of C#, and I think that would be a pretty neat combination.

> if you're an indie developer do you go with D or with Unity (which uses C#)?

You would have to weight this choice against existing engines like Unity/Unreal/Godot vs custom. I released a game with custom engine in D once and what really mattered was that there was no market fit (and no sales). Choosing engine vs custom is a question that only exists if people materialize to play your game ; a lot of successful game shops are prototype-heavy or at least advise that strategy.

Re: D 2.096 and other news

#45

Post by stelonix »

Decabytes wrote: post #13

I ended up playing around with D for a bit before moving to Rust and here were my thoughts Pros 1. It felt very practical. 2. Handling packages using Dub was great 3. The D programming book by Ali Çehreli was a great introduction http://ddili.org/ders/d.en/index.html 4. A lot of criticism around D were outdated. Whenever you search stuff about D you still find people talking about the split, disabling the GC invalida…

Recently I got fed up with C++ for good and have no interest in touching it anymore. There's just a sheer amount of complexity and lack of free (as in beer) tooling that has driven me mad these past years until I finally gave up last month.

Then I checked D and I wanted to try it, but couldn't get a Rider/IntellliJ (can't recall) plugin to work, so I also marked it as lack of tooling; I also couldn't find many code examples, either on github or in communities which weren't old-ass forums.

I finally decided to go back to the sanest language I've used, which is C#. With little effort I could get back to writing code instead of endless yak shaving for simple things. For these kind of projects I'm working, a GC isn't the issue, so that didn't bother me. It feels like asking for modern class-based with c-like-syntax and a good std lib in a language is too much... It's sad that C++ "won" the race being such a cumbersome language with slow compile times and a outdated mindset.

Re: D 2.096 and other news

#46

Post by virmundi »

EdwinLarkin wrote: post #4

How's D for simple microservices where one would use Go?

From hangin out on Reddit for dlang, the http server is pretty slow. This has caused people to look elsewhere. Some people are trying to improve the performance, but it’s not a high priority.

Re: D 2.096 and other news

#47

Post by pornel »

butterisgood wrote: post #2

Anyone able to report on the growth of the D community at all? Lots of press lately goes to Go and Rust. I even hear about Zig more than I hear about D these days. Yet I know of at least one company putting their eggs in the D basket (Weka). Just curious if anyone else feels like this is kind of risky compared to other more-established options. (obviously chicken and egg issues exist). Haven’t used D in quite a few y…

According to http://www.modulecounts.com crates.io adds more packages in a month than there are on DUB in total.

Re: D 2.096 and other news

#49

Post by nix23 »

stelonix wrote: post #45
Decabytes wrote: post #13

I ended up playing around with D for a bit before moving to Rust and here were my thoughts Pros 1. It felt very practical. 2. Handling packages using Dub was great 3. The D programming book by Ali Çehreli was a great introduction http://ddili.org/ders/d.en/index.html 4. A lot of criticism around D were outdated. Whenever you search stuff about D you still find people talking about the split, disabling the GC invalida…

Recently I got fed up with C++ for good and have no interest in touching it anymore. There's just a sheer amount of complexity and lack of free (as in beer) tooling that has driven me mad these past years until I finally gave up last month. Then I checked D and I wanted to try it, but couldn't get a Rider/IntellliJ (can't recall) plugin to work, so I also marked it as lack of tooling; I also couldn't find many code e…

You should checkout Go it sounds you have work to be done, and Go was exactly made for that.

Re: D 2.096 and other news

#50

Post by Kranar »

bachmeier wrote: post #34
banachtarski wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As just one anecdote, the mere presence of a GC made me stop looking at D more or less immediately. In terms of positioning, I think D would be better served focusing on a vertical.

> As just one anecdote, the mere presence of a GC made me stop looking at D more or less immediately. A lot of people say that, but that's the tip of an iceberg of 500 items that will prevent someone that doesn't want GC from using it. In other words, nobody ever used a language only because it didn't have a GC.

If you're being absolutely extreme then sure that's true. I'd still use Ruby with it's garbage collector to implement a video game instead of using Brainfuck even though Brainfuck doesn't have a GC.

But if we're being reasonable, then I can say me and my company mostly still use C++ because it doesn't have a GC. It's an otherwise horrible language and I'd love to get off it. For a new project making an order matching system for a financial exchange, we are experimenting with Rust as an alternative and it's looking very promising. I want to see a bit more how the async situation plays out because that aspect of the language has me concerned but overall it's a really clean and principled language.

At any rate, the point is that a GC in and of itself is a major deciding factor about whether a language is used or not for many production grade systems.

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