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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

#201

Post by lolinder »

tastyminerals2 wrote: post #174
jeffparsons wrote: post #14

At least Walter, and presumably others in the D leadership, are active here. There's a good chance they will see your comments. This is just a reminder that they are human, too, they care a lot about D, and in my experience they are basically decent people who are trying their best.

More than 20 years passed and nothing really changed. What makes you think it will be different now. It's a "Tango" part 2 all over again. Except now, the ship has long sailed.

They didn't say it would be different now, they're just reminding people that Walter is here on HN so to try to be respectful and realize that he's a human being too. Unlike most here, he's attached his real identity to this project, so drive by anonymous pot shots would be inappropriate.

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

#202

Post by cxr »

lifthrasiir wrote: post #198
cxr wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't consider a C++ (or C) replacement PLₓ successful until the people working on big compiler toolchains—many of whom are committed alternative programming language advocates themselves (consider the origins of e.g. Swift and LLVM)—decide that, moving forward, those will be written in PLₓ rather than C++. (Note that the bar I'm establishing here is not merely to have a self-hosted compiler (see many toy compil…

While I do hope that future, it is an unreasonably high bar because the main value of LLVM is that you don't have to make everything again to make your own PL implementation. For the same reason contemporary web browsers are unlikely to be fully rewritten in any other language unless they get completely displaced by newer browsers. (At least LLVM has a better chance of being replaced...)

> contemporary web browsers are unlikely to be fully rewritten in any other language

Right.

> it is an unreasonably high bar

It's not an unreasonable standard. We're talking about replacement. If isn't replacing C++ for this use case, then it's not a replacement by definition.

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

#203

Post by Starlevel004 »

chromatin wrote: post #2

My research group left D for Rust several years ago due to nonresponsiveness and poor language development trajectory. While I wish Adam and the others success with OpenD, I hope they can take the opportunity to pick a more unique/memorable name.

If they want to focus it more on systtems programming, maybe SystemsD...

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

#204

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

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

#206

Post by mplanchard »

fiddlerwoaroof wrote: post #32
fiddlerwoaroof wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rust is a really frustrating language for me: I understand the safety it provides but find the pain of actually using it makes it uncompelling. Plus, the Rewrite it in Rust movement is very off-putting

As far as specific complaints go, async rust seems to be a trap: I’ve heard of several companies adopting it and then regretting the decision six months later because of the failure of that abstraction to adequately abstract.

For more anecdata, I have been working professionally with async rust for three years and don’t understand why people complain so much about it. It solves the problem well, it provides predictable performance, and most of the time it’s straightforward to write and reason about.

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

#207

Post by hashmash »

petre wrote: post #123
badsectoracula wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to the followup a week later[0] it seems OpenD is doubling down on GC: > One of the guiding principles of this fork is to embrace the GC as a successful design rather than to shun and avoid it. [...] I have harshly criticized @nogc in the past as putting a disproportionate burden on library authors while being the wrong answer to what can be a perfectly fair question. [0] https://dpldocs.info/this-week-in-d…

The GC works fine. Why waste energy to duplicate the functionality that requires it? Programmers who don't want the GC are already using C++ or Rust instead. The GC is one of those tools that makes programming in D productive. The lack of libraries and modern tooling is the part that ruins it. That's why you get software written in Go and Java instead of D. I'd love to use it for embedded work instead of C and C++, e…

Unfortunately, the D garbage collector is a simple design that doesn't offer the performance and scalability of a modern collector. Someone switching over to D from Java/C#/Go might be surprised to see GC pauses reminiscent of 1998. Hopefully the maintainers of the D fork will address this.

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

#208

Post by dataflow »

Shorel wrote: post #142
dataflow wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> If that argument were solid, Golang would not be more successful than Dlang

I never said anything about being "successful". I said something about substituting for C++. Go isn't any closer to that than D.

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

#209

Post by lolinder »

datadeft wrote: post #116
fiddlerwoaroof wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rust is a really frustrating language for me: I understand the safety it provides but find the pain of actually using it makes it uncompelling. Plus, the Rewrite it in Rust movement is very off-putting

Rust is for people who stick around, can come over hurdles, can take in new concepts and see the overall benefits. It has a steep learning curve that pays off. For me there are three reasons why Rust is suitable for many usecases: - performance - safety - static binary compilation with targeting different cpu architecture After spending majority of my time with Python and Java in the last 10 years these are things i…

> Rust is for people who stick around, can come over hurdles, can take in new concepts and see the overall benefits

Speaking as someone who is learning Rust and really liking it, I just want to note that this comment is sort of emblematic of what is wrong with the Rust community. It comes off as pretty condescending—"Rust is for the people who are smart and don't give up easily, if you're less smart or give up easily you should really go find a language for wimps".

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

#210

Post by lolinder »

Shorel wrote: post #142
dataflow wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

A garbage collector may be right for Golang but wrong for D.
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