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OpenD, a D language fork that is open to your contributions

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Re: OpenD, a D language fork that is open to your contributions

#141

Post by teleforce »

WhereIsTheTruth wrote: post #131
teleforce wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fret not, Python just a fringe programming language for more than two decades, it only then become popular. If you have the right fundamentals success will eventually come your way.

Python is a interpreted language, and is both strongly/dynamic typed D is a native strongly typed language You don't make game engines in Python, and certainty not drivers, python devs fall back to C when they need performance, this should give you a hint

Sorry don't get your points, latest D compiler does support C native in addition to the much safer DasBetterC. D is even better you can do all things seamlessly in the same D ecosystem supported by GCC compiler suite by not even going to another language eco-system. Heck, D can be even be faster than Fortran and C++ for native HPC library seven years ago where Rust and Julia still revert to them for HPC routines until now [1].

[1]Numeric age for D: Mir GLAS is faster than OpenBLAS and Eigen:

http://blog.mir.dlang.io/glas/benchmark/openblas/2016/09/23/...

Re: OpenD, a D language fork that is open to your contributions

#142

Post by Shorel »

dataflow wrote: post #50
TillE wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the fundamental problem with D is much simpler than that, it's the technical context. D is a better C++, but it's not better enough to escape the gravitational pull of C++. Rust is sufficiently compelling, with its focus on memory safety.

I keep saying this and having the exact same argument with everyone every single time I mention it (and I'm sure here we'll go again), but D's fundamental problem was its GC. Its mere presence colors the code that uses it, and once your dependencies use the GC, you have no recourse. It's impossible to abstract away. I fail to see how such a language could ever substitute for C++.

I think this is the case of a few noisy people putting too much importance in a single feature, and ruining the whole for everyone else.

If that argument were solid, Golang would not be more successful than Dlang, but reality is, Golang numbers are just so much bigger.

Re: OpenD, a D language fork that is open to your contributions

#143

Post by Shorel »

lifthrasiir wrote: post #46
bsdpufferfish wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To overcome something as entrenched as C++ it has to be 10x better. Even rust isn't there. Most of it's community isn't ex C and C++ experts, it's people getting into low-level programming for the first time, either from scripting language or pure functional.

Don't we consider a C/C++ replacement "successful" when it was able to capture enough share of prior C/C++ uses, not the entire share? I never thought C or C++ could be completely gone out of sight, even COBOL is technically alive today (on life support). To be clear, I meant that D could have been in the position of Rust today if done right.

> To be clear, I meant that D could have been in the position of Rust today if done right.

Exactly. One language died arguing about a feature (Dlang), two different languages, one without it (Rust), another with it (Golang) proved that it was not as significant.

Re: OpenD, a D language fork that is open to your contributions

#144

Post by Shorel »

bachmeier wrote: post #18
Kranar wrote: post #7

D is such a sad case of how a good technical product can fail due to poor leadership and decision making. A language is more than just a compiler, it's also an ecosystem and a community. D's community is actually very welcoming but man, watch some of the DConf videos and Q&As on Youtube and it's cringe seeing key leaders talking down to people, or dismissing people's concerns, or just have this ego about themselves l…

> Good luck to these guys on trying to bring life back to it, but frankly I think at this point most people have given up and moved on to alternatives like Rust, Nim, Zig, etc... And back in 2015, folks were saying the same thing, but with different alternative languages. I remember twenty years ago when C++ was dead. Oh, and remember the good old days when Java was dead? I'm not sure why programming language discuss…

You just refreshed this memory for me:

I remember 25 years ago when StarCraft was dead and Age of Empires was it. It happened at the same moment my university switched from C++ to Java. I hated that change.

And I remember 15 years ago when the biggest e-sports events in the world were done using StarCraft.

Today I am back in university, and we are using C++. =)

Re: OpenD, a D language fork that is open to your contributions

#145

Post by tsimionescu »

fuzztester wrote: post #135
fsckboy wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i don't make memory safety errors in C or C++. i'd recommend embracing hungarian naming (if you call it apps-hungarian you've not embraced it fully enough, read older documentation) and be as rigid as rust about using it. i-, c-, p-, and Max are your best friends, don't declare one of those without declaring all the others that you will need. using hungarian, adopt naming conventions about Open/Close, Init/Finish, Al…

Interesting suggestions. How do you "hook' a function, like you said about malloc,free, main and exit? I guess it means intercept calls to it and do something additional to what it already does, something like Python decorators, but how do you do it in C or C++? I used C a lot (but not C++), but much earlier, and don't remember any method of hooking. atexit(), or something like it?

Given that they mention ifdef, I guess they just mean something like `#define malloc(x) (tracing_malloc((x))) ` in every place except the one where the tracing version is defined.

Re: OpenD, a D language fork that is open to your contributions

#146

Post by Shorel »

TheCondor wrote: post #10
Kranar wrote: post #7

D is such a sad case of how a good technical product can fail due to poor leadership and decision making. A language is more than just a compiler, it's also an ecosystem and a community. D's community is actually very welcoming but man, watch some of the DConf videos and Q&As on Youtube and it's cringe seeing key leaders talking down to people, or dismissing people's concerns, or just have this ego about themselves l…

Maybe they shouldn’t bring D back to life… drop the name, make a clean break and come up with a new one.

Digital Mars was an awesome name.

OpenD is not that awesome.

Re: OpenD, a D language fork that is open to your contributions

#148

Post by aldanor »

nicoburns wrote: post #35
LorenDB wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but I think you'll find that many people tend to resist change, including drastic syntactic changes (as compared to how languages like D iterate on previous languages like C++).

Rust syntax isn’t really that novel. It’s not exactly like C, but most of its syntax is pulled from some popular language: some from C, some from JS, some from Python, some from ruby, etc.

A lot more from ocaml than js/Python/ruby.

Re: OpenD, a D language fork that is open to your contributions

#149

Post by p0nce »

Kranar wrote: post #7

D is such a sad case of how a good technical product can fail due to poor leadership and decision making. A language is more than just a compiler, it's also an ecosystem and a community. D's community is actually very welcoming but man, watch some of the DConf videos and Q&As on Youtube and it's cringe seeing key leaders talking down to people, or dismissing people's concerns, or just have this ego about themselves l…

> it's cringe seeing key leaders talking down to people, or dismissing people's concerns, or just have this ego about themselves like they know what's best and everyone should shutup and just go along with them.

That's not the case. The job of language designers is to say "no" all the time and Walter is certainly a model with how to speak with users.

Re: OpenD, a D language fork that is open to your contributions

#150

Post by p0nce »

TillE wrote: post #9
Kranar wrote: post #7

D is such a sad case of how a good technical product can fail due to poor leadership and decision making. A language is more than just a compiler, it's also an ecosystem and a community. D's community is actually very welcoming but man, watch some of the DConf videos and Q&As on Youtube and it's cringe seeing key leaders talking down to people, or dismissing people's concerns, or just have this ego about themselves l…

I think the fundamental problem with D is much simpler than that, it's the technical context. D is a better C++, but it's not better enough to escape the gravitational pull of C++. Rust is sufficiently compelling, with its focus on memory safety.

Rust is sort-of a skin for C++11 though in terms of semantics, while new languages have GC to increase productivity.
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